Children ages 11 and 12 are engaging in increasingly more varied and independent technology use, with many acquiring their own smartphones and joining social media sites before they turn 13 (Influence Central, 2016; Lauricella et al., 2016). How do parents navigate this transition and mediate their tween's technology as they progress toward greater autonomy and independence? How do their mediation strategies evolve during this time? Additionally, although pre-adolescent children are engaging in more social opportunities with technology, they are limited in their ability to consider the perspectives of others and may be engaging in social interactions online with limited capacities for fully understanding how their content may be received by others (e.g., Piaget, 1952; Selman, 1980). How aware are they of others online? Who (if anyone) do they imagine when they share content in social media or engage in multiplayer games? Based on in-depth interviews with 40 parents and their 11- to 12-year-olds, this dissertation employed a grounded theory approach and examined various mediation strategies used among families of tweens as parents and tweens negotiate their expanding use of technology and digital media. Additionally, this study explored tweens' experiences with their imagined audiences across various online contexts and examined the ways in which parents shaped such experiences.

While findings from this study supported previous work identifying restrictive and active mediation strategies, co-use, participatory learning, and deference, results also revealed more diverse, refined practices (or sub-categories) within these categories and the evolution of such practices as parents aimed to support the development of their tweens' autonomy. In the service of promoting openness and trust between themselves and their tweens, parents began relying on more covert and reactive practices, rather than overt or proactive practices. Parents sought to monitor their child's technology use more unobtrusively and engaged in reactive strategies, addressing problems and issues they were not able to anticipate. As parents encountered new challenges and adjusted their practices to accommodate their tweens' growing independence, they felt overwhelmed and unsure of their mediation practices.

The exploratory nature of this study also allowed for the emergence of themes that have received little attention in parental mediation thus far. While research examining parental mediation practices has typically focused on the interplay of parental characteristics on such practices, findings from this study revealed that numerous child characteristics influence parents' concerns and beliefs about the impact media has on their children, the ways in which children engage technology (such as the content they consume or share or the amount of time they seek to spend with technology), and the practices parents engage in to moderate such use. Influential child characteristics emerging from the data included child gender, perceived maturity level, perceived effects on child development or behavior, executive function abilities, sociability, and agreeableness or obedience. Rather than a unidirectional process in which parents socialize their children's media experiences in a top-down approach, such findings demonstrate the transactional, bi-directional nature of parental mediation practices.

Finally, this dissertation explored tweens' interactions with others across video sharing sites, multiplayer games, and social media. Tween decisions regarding privacy settings and whom they accepted as followers varied across contexts and account profiles, with such decisions made in the service of their goals for such sites. While most tweens maintained private accounts, not all tweens or parents were aware of the actual privacy settings (particularly parents of tweens with public accounts). Parents expected their children to know all of the individuals they accepted as friends online, but the concept of "knowing" someone differed among tweens and parents, with tweens commonly accepting requests from people they had not met as long as they shared one or more friends in common. When evaluating friend requests or making judgments about other individuals in online spaces, tweens heavily relied on concrete, perceptual features (such as images, profile names, spelling abilities, and the absence or presence of creepy or inappropriate content) to inform their decisions. Furthermore, age-related trends emerged with 12-year-olds being more likely than 11-year-olds to consider their imagined audiences, to reflect on their posts prior to sharing, and to acknowledge that information shared or available in the profiles of others may not necessarily be accurate or honest.