J Youth Adolescence (2018) 47:445–459 DOI 10.1007/s10964-017-0722-4 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH The Protective Role of Parental Media Monitoring Style from Early to Late Adolescence Laura M. Padilla-Walker 1 ● Sarah M. Coyne 1 ● Savannah L. Kroff 1 ● Madison K. Memmott-Elison 1 Received: 26 May 2017 / Accepted: 14 July 2017 / Published online: 8 August 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract The goal of the current study was to examine the protective role that maternal media monitoring might have for adolescents. This was done by considering whether styles of media monitoring either directly reduced media use, or whether they buffered the associations between aggressive media use and adolescents’ prosocial behavior, aggression, and delinquency. Participants were 681 ado- lescents from two cities in the United States (51% female; 73% white), and their mothers, who provided data at two different time points, 2 years apart (when adolescents were roughly ages 13 and 15). Mixture modeling results revealed that mothers used four different styles of media monitoring made up of combinations of active and restrictive mon- itoring as well as forms of co-use. Styles that included active monitoring and connective co-use (i.e., engaging in media with the intent to connect with children) were directly associated with less media use, and moderated links between adolescents’ media use and behavioral outcomes concurrently but not longitudinally. The discussion was focused on the strength of considering multiple strategies of media monitoring together, and how this approach can inform future research in the area of parental media monitoring. Keywords Parental media monitoring ● Parental mediation ● Media use ● Parenting styles Introduction It is no surprise that the amount of time children and teens spend consuming media continues to rise given the sheer number of media outlets available to children today (e.g., video games, social media platforms, smartphones, apps, on-demand television and movies, personal computers and tablets; Rideout 2016). Though children are exposed to a considerable amount of media, more than half of media exposure takes place at home (Strasburger et al. 2013), providing an opportunity for parents to become involved in monitoring their children’s media use. Because of the transitionary nature of adolescence and the increase in media use for children in this age range (Rideout 2016), parental involvement has the potential to be particularly influential during the teen years. Research to date has been conducted on different strategies of parental media mon- itoring (e.g., restrictive, active) largely in isolation of others, while traditional parenting scholars suggest that the coa- lescence of different parenting strategies create an overall emotional climate, or parenting style (Darling and Steinberg 1993). In similar fashion, a variety of specific strategies parents use to monitor media may combine to create an overall media climate that then may be related to children’s behavior or acts as a moderator of the impact media has on child outcomes. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to take a person-centered approach to parental media monitoring to examine how groups of parents might use specific strategies in combination to create climates or “styles” of media monitoring. Person-centered approaches assume that there * Laura M. Padilla-Walker laura_walker@byu.edu Sarah M. Coyne smcoyne@byu.edu Savannah L. Kroff savi.keenan@gmail.com Madison K. Memmott-Elison madimemmott@gmail.com 1 Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA