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Background: Digital technology has a two-sided impact whether it is used appropriately or not. It is crucial to promote the benefits of digital technology and reduce its harms by bolstering adolescents' digital literacy. The appropriateness of the strategies parents use to manage their children's digital lives plays a key role. This study aims to investigate the separate effects of family socio-demographic factors and varied dimensions of parental mediation on adolescents' digital literacy separately and simultaneously to explore the appropriate parental mediation strategies even in the absence of favorable family status. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was utilized with a sample of 1894 Chinese adolescents in junior and senior high schools (mean age = 14.01, 48.94% female), using a set of exam questions to test children's objective digital literacy online. Family socio-demographic factors (parental marital status, economic status, and parental education levels) and varied dimensions of parental mediation were included as predictors of digital literacy. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to estimate the relation between the variables. Results: Higher parental education levels were positively associated with adolescents' parental mediation and digital literacy while better family economic status and parental divorce were negatively associated. Among the dimensions of parental mediation, active mediation, restrictive mediation and supervision were significantly associated with adolescents' digital literacy, but not for co-use. Active mediation and supervision showed significant positive associations with adolescents' digital literacy, whereas, co-use showed a significant negative association when all parental mediation dimensions were integrated into the model, The significant association between restrictive mediation and digital literacy disappeared. Parental mediation has diluted the impact of family socio-demographic factors on adolescents' digital literacy. Conclusions: Effective interventions are needed to promote parental active mediation and supervision to help adolescents develop digital literacy and navigate the digital world, especially for adolescents who do not have highly educated parents or whose parents are divorced. Highlights: This study explored the effects of parental mediation on the digital literacy of adolescents separately and simultaneously in China and highlighted the importance of promoting parental mediation when helping adolescents navigate the digital world, especially those who lack resources, confidence, experience or expertise related to digital media. This study set an online test to estimate adolescents' objective digital literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Parental absence is greatly associated with school bullying victimization of left-behind children (LBC) in migrant families. With the increasing popularity of the Internet, little is known about the association between parental migration and cyberbullying victimization, and potential mediators., Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study in Anhui and Zhejiang Province, China, in 2020. With a sample of 792 currently left-behind children (CLBC), 541 previously left-behind children (PLBC), and 628 never left-behind children (NLBC), path analysis was used to explore the association between parental migration and cyberbullying victimization among children, while considering the independent and sequential mediating roles of parent-child communication, and time spent online., Results: The prevalence of cyberbullying victimization was 29.3% among CLBC, 29.2% among PLBC, and 23.4% among NLBC. Path analysis showed that current left-behind status was positively associated with cyberbullying victimization among children ( p = 0.024). Furthermore, current left-behind status was associated with worse parent-child communication, which, in turn, predicted a higher prevalence of cyberbullying victimization [95% CI = (0.007, 0.036)]. Similarly, the previous left-behind experience was associated with worse parent-child communication, which, in turn, predicted a higher prevalence of cyberbullying victimization [95% CI = (0.013, 0.043)]. Current left-behind status was associated with increased time spent online, which, in turn, predicted a higher prevalence of cyberbullying victimization [95% CI = (0.013, 0.038)]. Additionally, the current left-behind status positively predicted cyberbullying victimization among children through the serial mediating roles of parent-child communication and time spent online [95% CI = (0.001, 0.006)]. Similarly, previous left-behind experience positively predicted cyberbullying victimization among children through the serial mediating roles of parent-child communication and time spent online [95% CI = (0.002, 0.007)]., Discussion: We propose that to protect CLBC and PLBC from cyberbullying victimization, it is of great importance for migrant parents to regulate children's time spent online and promote daily parent-child communication., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Wang, Lou, Xie, Zhao and Zhu.)