A contribution by Anja Treichel and Siphilisiwe Ndlovu, Bundeselternnetzwerk der Migrantenorganisationen für Bildung und Teilhabe (bbt), Germany, for the European Parents Association
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Specific Challenges for Immigrant Families
- Parentification in Immigrant Families
- One More Challenge – Children’s Media Use
- Empowering Parents Without Patronizing
- Families as a safe space
- Digital Questions Meet Forming Identities
- Invisible Weight: Growing Up Between Different Expectations
- Rhythms of Care: Cultural Wisdom in Daily Life
- Digital Dependency as a Mirror,Not a Flaw
- Conclusion
- References
1. Introduction
In today’s digital age, most children are growing up in a world profoundly shaped by screens, social media, and constant connectivity. For many young people, the internet is not just a tool, but a space where they go to ask their deepest questions: Who am I? How do I compare? Where do I belong? Questions often asked in silence. For children aged ten to twelve, these questions come early—at a moment when their sense of self is still tender and forming. This article explores how children, particularly those from immigrant families, experience digital habits not merely as addiction in the traditional sense, but as responses to emotional pressure, racism and discrimination, systemic challenges, and unspoken expectations.
Beyond screen time, we examine the layered realities faced by immigrant parents and families as they adapt to unfamiliar systems, cultures, and social expectations. The article highlights specific challenges such as parentification, where children are compelled to take on adult roles, and explores how immigrant-led organizations can play a crucial role in empowering families—without condescension. We also look at the responsibilities placed on parents in regulating children’s digital behavior, and ask how supportive structures—both legal and social—can help relieve this burden and transform the negative connotation of digital habits to skills that actually can support families.
Ultimately, we invite educators, policymakers, and caregivers to look at social issues and specific needs beyond the obvious “parents have to be able to regulate their kids’ behavior”, ask better questions, and recognize the cultural wisdom, care, and quiet labor that children and families already bring into both digital and physical spaces.
While these pressures affect many families, immigrant households often face an additional layer of complexity. In the next section, we look at how migration-specific factors deepen the challenges of digital life.
Our findings summarize decades of experience from bbt’s 17 member organizations, complemented by scientific insights and our own analyses.
2. Specific Challenges for Immigrant Families
There are many reasons why families migrate to European countries: a new job, family reunification, war, economic crises in their home countries, or asylum, to name but a few.
However, many of these families share a common hope: the chance to build a stable life in a new place. For many, the prospect of broader opportunities, including access to education and a more secure future for their children, is one of the most powerful reasons behind the decision to migrate.
Although support for families is well developed in many European countries , it is not always easy to access. At the same time, newly immigrated families face a variety of challenges that they often do not have the language skills or specific information to solve.
The optimism and hope that their children will build a better life for themselves is often at its highest shortly after migration. Families carry strong expectations on the society, on themselves and on their children, while at the same time facing external demands: learning a new language, finding employment, questioning familiar values and norms, and making great efforts to adjust to a way of life that may be very different from the one they knew growing up.
Education systems are complex and often differ significantly from those in the countries of origin. It takes immense effort for parents to guide their children towards educational success or to find appropriate childcare options—while at the same time trying to establish their own footing. Many families also face discrimination and a shift in social status. Educational goals and parenting styles are often challenged, as approaches that worked well in their home countries may not function in the same way in a new societal context.
The situation in some countries of origin places an additional burden on many families. Russia’s war in Ukraine or the conflict in the Middle East are just two examples of how war and crisis continue to shape family life. Families live in constant fear that loved ones who remained behind may be in danger or at risk of displacement. For those who have fled conflict, the challenges are not only structural, but deeply emotional. Some parents live with ongoing fear and grief, watching crises unfold from afar in the countries they were forced to leave.
These emotional strains are compounded by difficult everyday realities in the new country. In many European contexts, families struggle to find suitable housing or stable living conditions. Families already affected by poverty feel the impact most severely. The complexity of migrant family life is visible across many dimensions: emotional, structural, economic and social. With this article, we aim to raise awareness of both the challenges and the opportunities these families face. At the same time, we want to highlight the resources they bring with them, and call for stronger recognition of migrant families in family policy, public administration and in the work of our cooperation partners.
3. Parentification in Immigrant Families
Newly immigrated families often face a long and difficult journey of adaptation to a new society. While some parents may struggle with language barriers, unfamiliar systems, and cultural disorientation, their children typically adapt more quickly. Through daily exposure to school environments, peer interactions, and language immersion, children often become the first in the family to grasp the new cultural codes. Children quickly become cultural intermediaries in ways their parents cannot: handling paperwork, translating for adults, or code switching through systems.
This can lead to a phenomenon known as parentification—a reversal of roles where children take on adult-like responsibilities far beyond their developmental stage. In many immigrant households, children are asked to translate important documents, interpret in medical appointments, or go through bureaucratic systems that even adults find overwhelming. Over time, some parents may begin to rely heavily on their children for all logistical and administrative aspects of life in the new country. The child becomes the unofficial manager of the family.
In such cases, it is futile to believe that parents can fully control their children’s internet use. When children are already carrying the emotional and functional weight of the family, setting strict boundaries on anything and therefore also for screen time without understanding the broader context can be not only ineffective but also unfair.
These children are not just distracted—they are stretched, and before we ask them to self-regulate digitally, we must first acknowledge the real-world responsibilities they are silently managing.
If we want to improve children’s digital habits, we must look at the bigger picture and support parents in reclaiming their role as confident, present adults.
4. One More Challenge – Children’s Media Use
For immigrant families, the expectation to responsibly manage their children’s media use is not simply part of everyday parenting—it is one more burden in a long list of complex challenges. Alongside code switching through legal systems, adapting to unfamiliar educational structures, learning a new language, and maintaining financial and emotional stability, parents are now also expected to supervise digital behaviors in a world they themselves may not fully understand.
This raises the question: Is it fair or even feasible to place this additional responsibility entirely on the shoulders of parents, particularly those still trying to gain their footing in a new society? For this reason, policymakers and educators must consider legal frameworks that support families, such as regulating the design and accessibility of social media platforms based upon a safety-by-design approach for children respecting children’s rights to safety, protection and expression. By limiting harmful digital exposure at a structural level, we relieve parents of some of the pressure to act as sole gatekeepers.
At the same time, we must invest in accessible, low-threshold educational opportunities that empower parents to learn not only how media works, but also how to use it meaningfully—for communication, access to services, and social participation. Digital literacy should not be a luxury for the tech-savvy, but a right for all, including newly arrived families.
And let’s be honest: parents are often no better than their children when it comes to digital self-regulation. Many adults struggle to disconnect from their own screens or model balanced media habits. This is not a matter of blame, but of shared human behavior in a hyperconnected world. Supporting children in developing healthy media use must therefore begin with understanding the family’s situation as a whole—not with judgement, but with tools, trust, and systems that take pressure off rather than piling more on.
5. Empowering Parents Without Patronizing them
One of the key questions in addressing digital challenges and role reversals within immigrant families is: How can we empower parents to learn the necessary skills without patronizing them? Over the past few years, immigrant-led organizations have become increasingly visible across European societies. These organizations—rooted in their communities—are uniquely positioned to speak for themselves, rather than being spoken for or about.
In Germany, for instance, immigrant parents came together to build the Bundeselternnetzwerk der Migrantenorganisationen für Bildung und Teilhabe (bbt)—a powerful example of self-organization and advocacy. Such networks often have trusted, direct access to parents who are otherwise labeled as “hard-to-reach” target groups. They understand not only the challenges immigrant families face but also their strengths, values, and cultural resources.
Projects carried out by these networks have the potential to support both parents and their children, not by enforcing or imposing incomprehensible rules and norms from the outside, but by building skills through shared experiences, mutual respect, and community trust. At the same time, appropriate legal frameworks can support these efforts—not by replacing community action, but by protecting children and strengthening parental roles through policy that acknowledges systemic inequality.
6. Families as a safe space
For many immigrant children, the family functions as a vital safe space—an environment where they feel accepted, understood, and emotionally secure. It is one of the few places where they do not have to explain or justify their religion, cultural values, language, or the color of their skin. This sense of unconditional belonging is especially important in societies where children may regularly encounter stereotyping, discrimination, or social exclusion.
A safe space is defined in psychological and sociocultural literature 1 as an environment where individuals can express themselves freely without fear of marginalization, judgment or prejudice. Within immigrant families, this safe space emerges through shared cultural reference points, common values, and collective experiences of migration and adaptation. According to research by the University of Minnesota’s Immigrant Families Project, such family cohesion plays a critical role in reinforcing ethnic identity and promoting emotional well-being, especially during adolescence (University of Minnesota Press, 20222).
Moreover, scholars have noted that intergenerational conflict appears to occur less frequently in many immigrant families than in their non-immigrant counterparts3. This phenomenon is partly due to children’s awareness of the challenges their parents face. This awareness often fosters empathy, a shared sense of responsibility, and a lower inclination toward rebellion. Rather than being weakened by the pressures of migration, the family bond is often strengthened.
This cohesion is a valuable resource in working with immigrant families. Attempting to create change by encouraging children to oppose their parents—on the assumption that the family’s culture is inherently problematic—is not only ineffective, but potentially harmful. Sustainable support must build on trust, not division. Efforts that honor the integrity of family relationships while introducing new tools and perspectives are far more likely to succeed.
In the context of digital life, this familial refuge becomes even more significant. When children experience exclusion or misunderstanding in public institutions—such as schools—they may turn to both their family and digital media for relief. While digital spaces offer control and distraction, it is often the emotional safety within the family that provides long-term resilience.
Yet even the emotional shelter of the family has its limits when it comes to the growing influence of the digital world. While children may find cultural and emotional safety at home, they increasingly turn to digital spaces to explore personal questions their families may not be equipped—or expected—to answer. It is in these virtual environments that a new layer of vulnerability emerges, especially for children whose identities are still in formation.
7. Digital Questions Meet Forming Identities
Children today are not growing up in the same world their parents once knew. The internet is no longer just a tool, it has become the backdrop against which many children begin to understand themselves. They look for answers in scrolls and screens. Who am I? How do others see me? Do I matter? And for ten- to twelve-year-olds, these questions come too early, often before they are ready to hold them. Their self-worth begins to take shape through images, reactions and comparisons. What is often labelled as screen addiction is, in many cases, a way to cope, with school pressure, social competition and the quiet emotional demands they carry at home.
Particularly for children from migrant families, this pressure is not new. It is just rarely named. In many of these homes, parenting means more than care. It means code switching within systems. Keeping up appearances. Proving you are doing it right and children feel that. A child who disappears into gaming may not be avoiding chores. They may be blocking out the stress of being the cultural interpreter, the sibling who understands the forms, the one who does not ask for too much. A child who stays quiet may not be withdrawn. They may be protecting their parents from one more worry. Over time, many children learn to hold their questions alone. The screen becomes something they can control. Not because it brings joy, but because it brings relief.
8. Invisible Weight: Growing Up Between Different Expectations
This emotional weight does not stop at home. It follows them into school-spaces often described as equalising, but rarely experienced that way. Schools carry quiet expectations too. About how fast children respond. How openly families participate. How support looks at home. But not all families start from the same place. Some parents cannot explain every task or attend every meeting. Some children are balancing more than anyone sees. Still, digital behaviour is treated like a personal flaw. Children are expected to regulate themselves, stay focused, and succeed in systems that never stopped to ask what else they are carrying. A child glued to their phone is quickly labelled distracted, but what if they are exhausted. A student who disengages may be read as careless., but what if they are just trying to survive a space that rarely speaks to them. What adults call disconnection is sometimes just quiet adaptation, and if schools do not recognize this complexity, then even the best intentions will keep missing the children who need the most support.
9. Rhythms of Care: Cultural Wisdom in Daily Life
This does not mean that every digital moment is damaging. Screens are part of life, and some uses, like watching a film together, calling a relative abroad, or discovering something new, can bring joy and connection, but children need rhythm. Not constant control, but clarity about when rest, presence, and conversation come first. In many migrant families, this kind of structure already exists. Not from parenting books, but from cultural wisdom. Mealtimes without interruption. Shared music. Small responsibilities passed between siblings. These are not outdated traditions. They are ways of holding children. When this kind of belonging is crowded out by endless scrolling and emotional withdrawal, children do not just lose focus. They lose their anchor.
10. Digital Dependency as a Mirror, Not a Flaw
Digital addiction is not about weak parenting or broken children. It is a mirror. It reflects what children are being asked to carry, and how alone they often feel in carrying it. We cannot keep asking families to raise strong, well-adjusted children while giving them so little space to breathe. Nor can we speak about screen time without speaking about trust, pressure, and the quiet labour children are already doing to protect us. If we want children to live well in both the digital and the physical world, we have to meet them differently. That means asking better questions. Slowing down our assumptions. Creating spaces, at home and at school, where protection begins not with rules, but with presence. Children do not need perfect adults. They need ones who notice. Who stay close. And who understand that showing them how to live is still our most important task.
11. Conclusion
What is often labelled digital addiction is, in many cases, quiet adaptation. A way for children to hold things together when too much is expected and too little is named. Their screen use reflects more than distraction—it mirrors the weight of unread school letters, forms no one explains, and rules that shift without notice. It reflects homes where children translate adult conversations, carry younger siblings, and make sure their parents do not lose face in systems designed without them in mind. Inclusion often promises belonging, but delivers pressure. Parents are called partners, yet receive letters in languages they do not speak. They are invited to meetings they cannot afford to miss work for, and are judged by standards they were never allowed to learn. Multilingualism is praised on podiums, while school communication remains monolingual. Media literacy is treated as enrichment, when it has become basic survival.
If policies are serious about protecting children, they must stop treating their struggles as private problems, and start confronting the structures that produce them. This article does not ask families to do more. It asks systems to stop acting as if they already do enough. The European Parents Association and its partners are in a unique position to lead this shift: by treating digital literacy as a right, not a reward; by translating not only words, but expectations; by making space for families who already give more than they receive. Supporting children does not begin with new rules. It begins with seeing the world they carry: quietly, daily, and with more clarity than they are ever given credit for.
12. References
- Kalmijin, M. (2019). Contact und conflict between adult children and ther parents in immigrant families: Is integration problematic for family relationships? Jounal of Ethnis and Migration Studies, 45 (9), 1419-1438. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1522245
- Kreulich, Klaus [Hrsg.]; Matern, Sibylle [Hrsg.]: Teaching and learning in virtual space. Bielefeld : wbv Publikation 2023, 153 S. – URN: urn:nbn:de:0111-pedocs-287473 – DOI: 10.25656/01:28747; 10.3278/9783763974191
- Xiong, Z. B., Detzner, D. F., & Lee, R. M. (2022). Family connesctedness and identity. In R. M. Lee, D. F. Detzner, & Z. B. Xiong (Eds.), Immigrant and refugees families: Global perspectoves on displacements and resettlement (2nd ed., Chpater 8.2). University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. https://open.lib.umn.edu/immigrantfamilies/chapter/8-2-family-conncetedness-and-identity/
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