Investigation of parents' perceptions of digital game guidance strategies and the effect of digital games on preschool children

In the current century, technology has surrounded the living space of every individual. Parents born before the millennium encounter this situation later, and children are born into this environment. Children have become more knowledgeable and equipped about technological devices than their parents. Along with its advantages, many risk factors have also been part of the process. In this study, parents' digital game guidance strategies and the effects of digital games on preschool children were investigated. The universe of the research consisted of the parents of children aged 3-7 in public and private independent kindergartens affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Malatya and Hakkari city centers in the 2020-2021 academic year and in the kindergartens affiliated to primary school. Simple random sampling method was used for sampling. The following data collection tools were used in this particular study: "Demographic Information Form" developed by the researcher, "Effects of Digital Games in Early Years Scale" to determine the effect of digital games on children's development, "Effects of Digital Games at Early Ages" to determine the strategies parents use for their children in digital games and "Digital Play Parental Guidance Strategies Scale". In the statistical analysis phase of the study, the normality assumption of the variables was examined with the internal Shapiro-Wilk test, and the variance homogeneity assumption was examined with the Levene test. Spearman Correlation Analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between parents' digital parental guidance strategies and the effects of parents' perceived digital games. According to the results of the research, it was concluded that there is a relationship between the free parental guidance strategy and the time the child spends with digital technology tools during the day. In addition, it was determined that the active and technical parental guidance strategy was related to giving digital technology to children for learning and entertainment reasons, while the parental guidance strategy leading to free and digital was related to giving it for distraction, reward, communication and feeding reasons. Keywords: Digital games, digital game guidance strategies, preschool education