From Digital Control to Moral Self-Governance: A Theory of Amanah Internalization in Muslim Children
Keywords:
amanah internalization, digital moral self-governance, parental mediation, reflective accountability, religious socialization, self-determination theoryAbstract
Children increasingly make morally relevant digital decisions beyond immediate parental supervision, creating a regulatory challenge that parental mediation research does not fully explain. This conceptual paper addresses the external guidance–internal governance gap by developing Amanah Internalization Theory (AIT), a middle-range theory of digital moral self-governance among Muslim children. Integrating parental mediation, self-determination theory, religious socialization, and moral self-regulation, the paper constructs a sequential explanatory mechanism linking parental moral guidance to independent digital regulation. AIT proposes that parental moral framing interprets digital agency as entrusted responsibility, increasing amanah salience during unsupervised digital decisions. Salient responsibility activates reflective accountability, which converts moral meaning into prospective self-evaluation and supports internalized digital restraint. Repeated responsibility-based restraint subsequently develops digital moral self-governance by reducing dependence on immediate parental surveillance. The theory further specifies autonomy support, family religiosity, and developmental capacity as boundary conditions. AIT extends digital parenting theory toward post-mediation internal governance and provides a testable framework for future construct validation, experimental mechanism testing, experience-sampling research, and longitudinal investigation of children's moral regulation in digital environments.
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