Researchers have examined the role of electronic communication on social and familial relationships. Lanigan, Bold, and Chenoweth (2009) conducted a survey study involving 103 participants, including parents of children under 12, parents of children 12 and up, post-parenting families, and couples without children. Their study explored family adaptability and cohesion, alternative use of technology time, and perceived impact of technology on family relationships. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the participants (n = 79, 89%) reported that technology had affected their family relationships (Lanigan et al., 2009). Perhaps, what might come as a surprise is the direction of said impact. The majority (n = 36, 45%) shared that computers had a mostly positive impact, whereas less than one-quarter (n = 16, 20%) reported a negative impact. The remaining participants shared that the impact of technology on family relationships was mixed (positive and negative; n = 19, 25%).
Further discussion of the Lanigan et al. (2009) findings revealed that time spent with technology, like computers, generally replaced time that would have been spent alone or involved with other forms of technology like television rather than time that would have been spent with family members (Lanigan et al., 2009). Interestingly, those few participants who did perceive that the computer interfered with family time were more likely to classify the rules and roles within the family as being less flexible (Lanigan et al., 2009). Other authors have also found that the more time youth spend on their phones, the more poorly those same adolescents rated their connection with their parents (Padilla-Walker, Coyne, & Fraser, 2012). For some, the increased permeability of boundaries between the family and the outside world via technology negatively affected family relationships and reduced family time (Lanigan et al., 2009). But, for most, the use of computers improved family communication, served as a shared activity, helped members meet a variety of needs like entertainment, information gathering, and household management, and increased efficiency resulting in more free family time (Lanigan et al., 2009).
Generally speaking, there are a couple of different dimensions of communication patterns in families. The first dimension refers to context a family creates in having conversations (Ledbetter, 2010). Families may fall anywhere on a continuum in this dimension, with low-communication families being rather closed and having limited space for few topics, whereas families high in this dimension encourage open communication about a variety of topics, including emotional expression (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2002). The second dimension in family communication patterns is the degree to which a family is homogeneous (and conforms) in their attitudes, beliefs, and values. Families high on the continuum are those where parental authority is highly valued; low conforming families do not have the same hierarchical structure, may be chaotic, or have few rules (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2002). In reference to technology, there is some evidence that family communication about appropriate technology usage connects to better competence in using technology. The attitude a family holds about online communication influences the competence of the youth user. According to Ledbetter (2010, p. 112):
conversation orientation emerges as a potential theoretical mechanism via which conformity orientation influences subsequent schemata for the role of technology in interpersonal relationships. In other words, conformity orientation may not influence children’s online communication attitude unless the family emphasizes frequent interpersonal communication (i.e., conversation orientation) among family members; yet when families do exhibit high conversation orientation, attitude toward online self-disclosure varies greatly depending on the family’s level of conformity orientation.
In other words, the high conversation families beget youth who know how to use technology more effectively. Further, competence is enhanced in high conversation families when those families also have a moderate level of conformity—not too flexible to be chaotic, but also not overly rigid (Ledbetter, 2010).
Schofield-Clark (2013) noted that families with technology have opportunities for expressive empowerment and respectful connectedness. Expressive empowerment as it pertains to technology means that mobile phones provide us more ways to empower ourselves through expression. Children with phones may feel empowered to answer the phones on their own, or even to make decisions about whether to take an incoming call. Adolescents may feel empowered to have a social media account without friending their parents and may express themselves through posting on such accounts with little recognition of the risks they are taking with certain posts. In many ways, they may abdicate any cautions around safety for the excitement of their independence in those decisions. Empowered expression, however, does not have to be negative; in many families, the expressive empowerment can be beneficial and is developmentally appropriate. It can be a way of testing the waters toward self-expression and being able to experiment with independence when done so in relatively safe channels.
Respectful connectedness (Schofield-Clark, 2013) refers to the idea that media can be used as a way to connect and communicate with those in our families. It can reinforce values and provide opportunities for family togetherness. It may even provide opportunities for youth to engage in relatively safe activities, as opposed to the alternatives. Using media also provides an opportunity for trust to be exhibited from parents toward their children.
Few scholars have examined how technological communication varies by individual life course developmental stage (Adams & Stevenson, 2004), and/or the role of technology across the couple and family life cycle (Hughes & Hans, 2001). In a study by Morrison and Krugman (2001) involving 105 participants, the influence of in-home media technologies on the social environment of the home concerning social facilitation, rulemaking, attitudes toward technologies, and shifts and expansions around media usage was explored. Participants broke down into two different types—families using low/moderate technologies (i.e., continuous technologies like television) and those using high-level technologies (i.e., discontinuous technologies like computers). The largest theme of the study was that of the “valuing” of media technologies (Morrison & Krugman, 2001). Those with higher-level technologies tended to place more value on media technologies than those with low/moderate technologies (Morrison & Krugman, 2001). The researchers discuss that variances in the valuing of technologies might be related to the evolution of the family over their life cycle (Morrison & Krugman, 2001) and advocate for examination of the way that technology grows and changes as the family grows and changes (Morrison & Krugman, 2001), which is the focus of this chapter.
It is important to note that despite the difficulties that technology can pose in family relationships, the literature regarding the role of technology on parent-child and family relationships remains mixed. Some researchers have found that computers reduce familial contact, yet others have demonstrated either no change or an increase in family contact resulting from home computer use (Lanigan et al., 2009). These results seem to demonstrate that it is not necessarily the inclusion of technology in children’s and their parents’ lives that creates problems, but rather how they attend to technology that makes the difference. For instance, when parents and children collaborate on technological activities together it can actually improve their communication (Mesch, 2006). In addition, parents who are in need of support, assistance finding extracurricular activities, and childcare providers can find these services much more readily using online access (Mesch, 2006). With the rise of new media and home computers more parents have been able to work from home, meaning that there is often more time for them to spend at home with children (Watt & White, 1999). Finally, for parents who work outside of the home, the use of new media like smartphones has provided a more consistent bridge through which to stay in contact with and monitor children who arrive home before their parents (Watt & White, 1999).
Children under the age of 5 experience difficulty understanding and communicating remotely via the phone (Ballagas, Kaye, Ames, Go, & Raffle, 2009). The social and cognitive challenges of using telephones faced by young children decreases their motivation for use (Ballagas et al., 2009). Kids up to age 9 are relatively unmotivated to communicate via telephony (Ballagas et al., 2009). Interestingly, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center Internet and American Life Project Survey of parents of children with cellphones, roughly 3% of children under the age of 10, 6% of 10 year olds, and 11% of 11 year olds had cellphones of their own (Len-hart, 2010). This means that some children may be receiving cellphones before they have the capabilities to successfully negotiate their use or are motivated to use them apart from their parents. When parents are a part of the calling process, however, many of the barriers that exist for telephony by young children are diminished (Ballagas et al., 2009). Another way that the issues faced with telephony can be circumvented for young children is using video calling (Ballagas et al., 2009).
Another key part is to whom these children are talking. In the case of divorce, children who have access to a cellphone may serve as the mediators between separated or divorced parents, which also changes the dynamics of family communication. In the case of divorce, young adults were more likely to feel caught in the middle when their parents were antagonistic with one another (Schrodt & Shimkowski, 2013). In cases where parents are antagonistic toward one another, they may be more likely to rely on having their children be the intermediary in terms of communication between parents because technology in the child’s hands would inherently mean distance between the parents.
One ill effect of children serving in the role of the intermediary may be parental alienation. As one parent has direct access to their children, the likelihood of parental alienation is increased because there is not a buffer regarding what is said (Johnston, 2005). In the case of cellphones where that communication is private and can be deleted and not traced, the potential for alienation may be even greater. Further, it allows the child a choice in whether they will accept the visitation, which may or may not be developmentally appropriate, given the developmental stage.
What involvement with technology by parents of infants and young children means for themselves in the future is that they will most likely not ever have an identity apart from technology. Their pictures, videos, and stories are told online before they are able to give permission and consent offline to others in doing this or before they are able to be mindful about what they share themselves. The implications of this is that the responsible adults and parents in their lives need to be mindful of their web print before they can be mindful of it themselves. Care providers are the gatekeepers of children’s web prints and, in some cases, have been prosecuted for not taking this responsibility seriously. Lawsuits have been filed against parents non-consensually sharing private information about their children online (DW, 2016).
One of the difficulties in negotiating this has historically been that adolescents typically hold a higher degree of technological literacy than those at other points in the e-developmental lifespan (DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman, & Robinson, 2001). Many adolescents are and have always been digital natives—meaning they are native speakers of the language of technology because they have been raised in a world where it has always been present (Prensky, 2001). “Digital natives” is a controversial term (Selwyn, 2009). It describes people born after 1993 who use the Internet and new media, but due to the changes in technology, there are two different types: first generation digital natives and second generation. It is not surprising that second generation digital natives are more likely to use email more frequently and to also rate their experience of using technology and email as more positive than first generation natives, though first generationers also report positive experiences (Joiner et al., 2013). The adolescents of today, particularly those born from 1996 and later, are really the first generation who has grown up digital (Heim, Brandtzæg, Hertzberg, Endestad, & Torgersen, 2007). Why 1996? Because this was the year that Internet use began to rise and become more common in homes in the United States (Coffman & Odlyzko, 1998). Since this time more and more people have been raised side-by-side with technology, and while at one time there was a so-called “digital divide” that separated those that had technology from those that did not, this has almost entirely disappeared in the US (Horrigan, 2009; Rushing & Stephen, 2011). The generation of digital natives differs from most of their parents, who more than likely are either digital immigrants, meaning that they were not born into a digital age and thus have not easily adopted the digital language, or digital settlers (Prensky, 2001). Digital settlers grew up in an analog world, but are now e-bilingual in that they speak both the digital and analog languages to varying degrees (Prensky, 2001). The evidence seems to suggest that “digital natives” really differ only in terms of quantity of their technology usage rather than in substantive qualitative ways (Margaryan, Littlejohn, & Vojt, 2011).
Differences in terms of digital languaging and other areas of digital competency, between parents and adolescents can make the negotiating of this e-developmental period difficult for relational systems with adolescents. After all, management of technology usage requires technological understanding that many adolescents acquire before their parents. Survey research by Mesch (2006) of 754 children aged 12 to 17 and their parents revealed that adolescent-parent conflicts with regard to Internet usage are strongly related to the parental perception of their child as a computer expert. This means that often one of the most difficult things for parents to negotiate in relation to re-establishing roles, rules, and boundaries with adolescents is the balancing of power and re-establishing of hierarchy within the family, as adolescents often become the people with the most technological knowledge and highest degree of digital literacy (Aarsand, 2007).
Perhaps what is most interesting about teen use of technology is that their patterns are distinctly different than those of any other age group (Jordan, Trentacoste, Henderson, Manganello, & Fishbein, 2007). Little is known, however, about their motives, perceptions, and awareness around use (Hundley & Shyles, 2010). Ninety-five percent of teens have access to a smartphone and describe themselves as “online constantly,” with YouTube and Snapchat being the most common platforms used by teens (Anderson & Jiang, 2018).
While adolescent girls might be doing more texting, teen boys are engaging in more gaming (Rushing & Stephens, 2011). Many care providers worry about the effects of gaming on their kids, ranging from worrying over isolationism to exposure to explicit sexual and violent aggression (Villani, Olson, & Jellinek, 2005). Surprisingly, however, there is also correlational research linking reduced aggression offline to digitally violent gaming. No doubt myriad individual, cultural, developmental, familial, and parental differences account for outcomes in these various research studies (Villani et al., 2005). Since research remains inconclusive, it is essential that parents be available to monitor technological (including gaming) content, interactions, and timing (Villani et al., 2005).
Often it is the case that teens in the US are using more than one platform at a time, and they themselves are not clear on the impact of social media on their lives—whether it be positive or negative (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). Estimates are as high as 45% of US teens between ages 13 and 17 years being online via mobile devices at a near-constant basis (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). While online, most teens are visiting Snapchat (35%), YouTube (32%), Instagram (15%), or Facebook (10%) (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). There are differences around gender, ethnicity/race, and economic status in terms of which online platform is used most and least frequently by teens. Teens of lower-income backgrounds use Face-book more often than those of higher-income backgrounds (22% versus 4%) (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). Girls are more likely than boys to use Snapchat most frequently (42% versus 29%), whereas boys are more likely than girls to use YouTube (39% versus 25%; Anderson & Jiang, 2018). White and Hispanic teens are most likely to use Snapchat (41% and 29%, respectively), and Black teens are most likely to use Facebook (26%; Anderson & Jiang, 2018). Finally, while teens may be aware of the digital devices that they own, they experience a high degree of temporal displacement while using them—meaning that they are frequently not aware of the amount of time spent with their technology (Hundley & Shyles, 2010).
Parenting is hard in the best of circumstances. Many things about technology make it easier to parent. Most of the research regarding technology and communication in relationships that has to do with family is focused on mothers. Blogs, for example, are a common method by which mothers seek to ascertain support and connection with other mothers (Gabbert, Metze, Bührer, & Garten, 2013), perhaps in an attempt to mitigate the stress of parenting (Leahy-Warren, McCarthy, & Corcoran, 2011). The average time new mothers spend on the computer is approximately 3 hours, and these 3 hours are mostly spent using the Internet. The major reason new mothers cite for logging on is to keep a connection to family and friends—presumably to provide updates about the infant and family/relational system life (McDaniel, Coyne, & Holmes, 2012). On the other hand, others have found that frequent use of Facebook is associated with greater parenting stress (Bartholomew, Schoppe-Sullivan, Glassman, Dush, & Sullivan, 2012). Mothers also use technology to get advice about issues related to parenting (Duggan, Lenhart, Lampe, & Ellison, 2015).
The ways in which fathers use technology are not wholly different from others. In one qualitative study exploring how fathers of preterm babies used the social media discovered similar themes to Duggan et al.’s (2015) findings about mothers—including looking for support and education (Kim, Wyatt, Li, & Gaylord, 2016). Stay-at-home fathers also use the Internet to blog, and single fathers use the Internet to identify role models (Ammari & Schoenebeck, 2015).
Recently at a family-oriented restaurant, we began taking note of every other parenting group or family around us. The sight was astonishing: we noticed the abdicating of parenting to the devices in front of us with regularity and, alarmingly, comfort. Parents would arrive with their children and slap a set of headphones on the child attached to a small tablet in a child-friendly case (rubber and looking like a robot). What we began to wonder was how children are learning to be able to regulate emotions? Anxiety? To be patient? To order food themselves? To talk to their parents? There are some good reasons that parents may have for abdicating their responsibilities as parents to technology. Parenting is an emotionally and physically demanding endeavor. It is tough to be able to have a conversation with a partner when one or more of the children are dysregulated. They may wish to want to talk to one another without the hindrance of warning little Sally to move her arm before she spills her milk, or having to entertain the kids to prevent them from disrupting other patrons. It may have been the first time in a long time that parents could talk to each other. We get it; we understand it; but the question is whether that is the best decision for children.
Given that 94% of parents are on social media and 70% are posting frequently (Duggan et al., 2015), it is highly likely that some aspects of one’s parenting will be impacted by technology usage. A qualitative study conducted by Johnson (2017) was designed to determine the extent to which parents are aware of their own phone usage behavior. Parents admitted to being “distracted” by phones in their parenting, a finding that corroborated the work of McDaniel and Coyne (2016). When observing others’ behavior in using the phone instead of attending to their children, participants reported a sense of shaming and judgment. When discussing themselves, however, mothers justified their decision as needing that time. Part of what may contribute to this distraction is in fact a sense of urgency that is brought on by the expectations of the outside world to respond to every little ring, vibration, and alert (McDaniel & Coyne, 2016). Related to Hertlein’s (2012; Hertlein & Blumer, 2013) concept of accessibility, we are all accessible via phone, which increases our anxiety around not responding, as the unstated expectation is if we are accessible, we are implored to respond, lest we feel the anxiety of not responding. Some people in the study reported that they attempted to establish boundaries between the phone and their family life, but that in some cases, the boundaries were not upheld due to the nature of the contact made from the outside world (i.e., a supervisor or another individual in a position of hierarchy making contact might warrant a response).
Technology and social media in particular have drastically changed the way in which members of adoptive families/relational systems communicate with one another. The rationale for adoptions to be “closed” (in other words, the child and the family not having information about the biological other family) was to limit the stigma and confusion that the child might experience, and to limit the opportunity for interference from the biological parents on the bonding between adoptive parents and the child (Black, Moyer, & Goldberg, 2016).
As adoptions have more frequently become “open” (knowledge of placement and/or communication between adoptive and birth parents), the Internet and social media have played a huge role in providing a space for making connections. One of the primary issues is about maintaining boundaries, and families need to negotiate what would be the appropriate boundaries in communicating with family members. Approximately 20% of adoptive families have had some passive contact with birth families via Facebook or other social media and have downloaded information that may be used later, and 50% have made contact via technology (Black et al., 2016). Specifically, researchers have discovered that our Couple and Family Technology framework (Hertlein, 2012; Hertlein & Blumer, 2013) offers a useful guide in that it provides a space to both build and exhibit mutual trust (Black et al., 2016). In addition, diffuse boundaries are more common in a digital world and, in adoption, may shift people away from making contact with either the adoptive families or the birth families, as people may be unsure whether the people they are contacting will be able to maintain appropriate boundaries. Two other pieces of the Couple and Family Technology framework—accessibility and affordability—also contribute to how these families navigate social interactions. They allow birth parents to surveil their birth child while being relatively unobstructive.
Privacy is a huge issue with online interactions. The latest news regarding Facebook and its data breach (where the sharing of private information occurred) has hundreds of thousands of people deactivating or totally deleting their accounts (Kelly, 2018). Yet our concerns about privacy do not necessarily result in behavior change with Internet usage (Hallam & Zanella, 2017). Privacy, while problematic for adults online, is equally an issue with teens and kids. There really is not a value in privacy as youth rush online to share the smallest of feelings (Taylor & Rooney, 2017). The Internet and new technologies provide ways for youth to have more levels of privacy than in the past. Youth can (and more often than we want to believe) create fake email accounts or obtain social media profiles without alerting their parents. In addition, both youth and adults can join any number of media sites or register for websites via a name generator, and use these email addresses as a way to bypass a system in order to obtain a benefit without having to give away their personal email address. It is a way to stay private while expecting the rest of the world does not.
Another issue that intersects with stages of development is how technology alters the developmental tasks specifically with regard to autonomy, privacy, and boundary management—key skills for emerging adults (van den Broeck, Poels, & Walrave, 2015). Emerging adults (aged 18 to 25) tend to be the group that uses social media at a higher rate than other groups, and a huge part of this is self-disclosure (van de Broek et al., 2015). The development of Facebook and decisions about how to interact with parents (or whether one should) is considered to be a significant dilemma (Child & Westermann, 2013). First, social media is a primary way in which adolescents communicate with their peers. Second, they also communicate with their parents less frequently as they shift through this developmental stage as a way to develop autonomy (Keijsers & Poulin, 2013). The “friending” of parents on Facebook is inversely related to the relationship offline: in other words, the worse a relationship between parent and child is offline, the more likely they are to “not friend” on social media (De Wolf, Willaert, & Pierson, 2014).
At the same time, young adults and teens do not feel that they can necessarily decline when a parent sends a Facebook friend request (Mullen & Hamilton, 2016), likely because of the hierarchy involved in the request and ramifications for declining that request (Child & Wester-mann, 2013). There are three actions that can be taken once a parent has requested to “friend” their teen: the teen can choose to ignore, accept, or decline the request (Child & Westermann, 2013). Of those who do grant their parents access to their online profiles, only 20% interact with their parents daily on those sites (Coyne, Padilla-Walker, Day, Harper, & Stockdale, 2014). Some youth, particularly Black urban youth, prefer to text message with their parents, as they feel that they are in more control of the information they share with their parent(s) versus connecting on social media (Racz, Johnson, Bradshaw, & Cheng, 2017). Finally, there are many parents who simply do not monitor their children’s social media, citing reasons such as that their child is an emerging adult, that they do not want to violate their child’s trust, and that the parents themselves have other things to do with their time (Vaterlaus, Beckert, & Bird, 2015).
The term “helicopter parent,” coined by Cline and Fay (1990), refers to a cluster of behaviors that characterize a parent as overprotective across many domains including financial, physical, and emotional (Reed, Duncan, Lucier-Greer, Fixelle, & Ferraro, 2016). Those parents on the negative spectrum of these behaviors communicate with their children with a high frequency, insert themselves or flat-out intervene in a child’s decision-making in a way that is inconsistent with their child’s developmental stage, remove barriers to ensure their children’s success, and are highly (and personally) invested in their children’s goals (Oden-weller, Booth-Butterfield, & Weber, 2014). While maladaptive helicopter parenting typically emerges from well-educated, well-resourced, and well-intentioned parents (Kantrowitz & Tyre, 2006), it is tied to worse outcomes for young people. Children of helicopter parents have higher rates of prescription drug use, painkiller use, and experience lower self-esteem (Reed et al., 2016). They are less adjusted in their development, are less mature, and are less independent (Reed et al., 2016). Further, they have more difficulty in problem-solving (Odenweller et al., 2014), which may have a marginal impact to their physical health due to the indirect effect of the psychological issues (Reed et al., 2016), and seem to be more entitled (LeMoyne & Buchanan, 2011). Academically, they suffer from lower levels of engagement in school and lower grades (Shoup, Gonyea, & Kuh, 2009). Helicopter parenting does not work out well for communication either. Just because helicopter parents are doing more talking does not mean that more communication is happening: that is, the conversations are not about private and personal matters (Oden-weller et al., 2014).
Digital technologies are removing the need for people to be helicopter parents and instead are allowing us to revert to being drone parents— those who watch from afar, inconspicuously, and then have video evidence of the observations we are making. Not only do we retain the ability to intervene in our children’s lives in an instant, we can now have digital evidence that our child needs us or is not following our prescription, thus rationalizing more surveillance. According to Taylor and Rooney (2017):
Common idioms, such as “keeping an eye on the kids”, expose the inherent complexities and contradictions harbored by surveillance practices; on the one hand, surveillance can be perceived as a protective measure to stave off exposure to potential dangers; on the other hand, it can refer to assurance that young people do not cause trouble or mischief (Taylor, 2016). There is certainly ambiguity regarding the applications of surveil-lance. Lyon (2003) suggests that the underlying reasons for surveillance can be situated along a “continuum from care to control”, arguing that “some element of care and some element of control are nearly always present”. Similarly, Nelson and Garey (2009) view the motivations of care and control “in a dialectical relationship with each other, and not a simple dichotomous one.”
(pp. 1–2)
One case demonstrates this concept brilliantly. An upper-class family of mixed ethnic backgrounds living on the West Coast of the US came to therapy seeking assistance with their 15-year-old son. He was experimenting with marijuana and cocaine and ended up in the emergency room as a consequence of one of those experiments. His parents, both practicing physicians, were very concerned for his physical well-being and, when the crisis of the physical issues resolved, turned toward addressing his compliance and lack of obedience. The parents had constructed a monitoring system based on the youth’s phone location and using a global positioning system (GPS) application (app). They would ask where he was going and wait for an answer; they would allow him to leave and use the GPS device to locate where he was, then drive out to where he was to ensure that he was not with people of whom they did not approve. These actions may sound as if they are rather benign or an appropriate reaction to protect and advocate for the welfare of their son. As time progressed, however, as the 15 year old became more trustworthy, his parents stepped up their surveillance to include every manner of electronic surveillance to catch him in the slightest transgression, and enabling them to apply severe punishments.
The 15 year old was, naturally, highly aversive to the surveillance methods used by his parents. In fact, he was only partially aware of all of the methods used, and the ones he did know about contributed to his feeling untrustworthy, damaged, etc. As a consequence, he began to act out by engaging in more lying as a way to develop autonomy His parents responded swiftly with more punishments: the cycle of who was in control of this youth escalated into a dangerous game. The parents went so far as to continue to track him not only on his phone, but also using GPS on his car when he went to college across the country, and throughout his college career, despite him performing well academically. In this case, the surveillance clearly demonstrates Taylor and Rooney’s (2017) concept of the continuum of care to control; their attempts to track originated as a way to demonstrate caring and protection of their son. It ended up as a way to control and (attempt to) ensure that he would follow their directives, rules, and mandates.
Developmentally, computers and camera technology have introduced us to a new world of surveillance—beginning with surveillance of the self. Digital recording of events allows us to relive and re-experience the world. Terming it the “society of the spectacle” (p. 47), Lasch (1979) noted:
We live in a swirl of images and echoes that arrest experience and play it back in slow motion. Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe our experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life the character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors. Life presents itself as a succession of images or electronic signals, or impressions recorded and reproduced by means of photography, motion pictures, television, and sophisticated recording devices. Modern life is so thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions—and our own—were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for some close scrutiny at some later time.
(p. 47)
The constant proliferation of images, however, can also lead us to a pervasively distorted view of the world. Some authors such as Sontag (1977) argued that we use photos and images to verify that we are living, breathing beings. The problem with this use is that we learn to depend on this media to develop our sense of whom we are, which could potentially lead us to challenge our view of reality. Lasch and Sontag made these points in the 1970s, but the proliferation of audio visual media has continued, thereby making these points striking commentaries on today’s society.
Surveillance is commonly used by parents to identify whether their children are safe. Another way that parents often ameliorate some of their e-concerns is by interacting with their teens in online environments, such as playing on the same team when online gaming, or friending their children on SNSs. This serves as yet another example of the balancing act that parents participate in during this stage of development. This act involves balancing trusting their teens to act autonomously while also maintaining some semblance of control over their actions. This is a task that parents have been doing for a very long time with their teenagers; however, now it is just being done in the context of technology. It may bring some comfort to know that the fourth theme in the Hundley and Shyles (2010) study revealed that teens have a palpable sense of risk associated with using online mediums like SNSs. They reported having a keen sense of the need to avoid those who may be dangerous to them online. The ways in which they accomplished this include altering or omitting sensitive information, friending only people they know in their actual offline social world, routinely blocking those people who are unknown to them offline, taking necessary precautions to help ensure safety from hackers, and building a new profile page/new gaming world if they get bothered or hacked.
Though it appears that some adolescents have a fair level of knowledge and management skills around negotiating some of the risks associated with online interactions, it is still wise for parents to practice monitoring teen Internet use. It is important, however, to do so in ways that do not create a distancing or defensiveness effect, as is the case with managing other issues in this developmental stage via parenting practices (Rushing & Stephens, 2011). According to Mesch (2006) intergenerational conflicts between adolescents aged 12–17 and their parents are higher in families where the parents express concern over the negative consequences of technological usage. Yet, common sense would suggest: “if you can’t talk about technology you probably shouldn’t be using it,” and this logic would also seem to apply to adolescents and their parents as well. So how is a parent to express their concerns with regard to teen techno-practices in a way that is more likely to lead to a productive conversation and promotion of healthy practices in this developmental stage and ones yet to come? Perhaps a dialogue can be weighted more toward the positive consequences of technology in their teens’ lives, and with some conversation regarding how they are to successfully negotiate the potential negative consequences, including the ways in which parents may act as allies rather than enemies in managing these concerns (Lanigan et al., 2009; Rushing & Stephens, 2011).
As described earlier, surveillance is becoming more challenging for parents as youth are often using devices that are single-user such as online games and social media sites via cellphones (Ferreira et al., 2017). In many ways, however, we are becoming habituated to being watched and monitored (Taylor & Rooney, 2017). We begin a process of technology-mitigated surveillance in the earliest stages of pregnancy via ultrasounds and 3D imaging. We then progress to baby monitors and Smart Nurseries, which ensure that we can connect all of our monitoring devices together and operate them from a single application on our phones. In Taylor and Rooney’s (2017, p. 5) words: “the video camera becomes the surrogate parent, observing the child’s activity and development, absent yet continually ‘present.’”
We can all agree that parents need to supervise and monitor their children in some capacity. The question becomes how much? And what does that look like in a digital world? While it may be tempting to “drone” parent, surveilling our youth may have some impact on their internalizing and externalizing behaviors (Taylor, Lopez, Budescu, & McGill, 2012). Specifically, parents who are supportive emotionally to their children and are engaged in activities with them have children who are less likely to abuse substances (see, for example, Gaylord-Harden, Campbell, & Kesselring, 2010; Ghazarian & Roche, 2010). Children whose parents monitor them more diligently are at reduced risk of violence, have a lower likelihood of engaging in behaviors that compromise their health and safety, and tend to be better adjusted. At the same time, the effectiveness of control exerted by a parent varies in effectiveness based on the social context. For example, family relationships with demanding kin as well as psychological control from moms was associated with internalizing. Further, the factors tend to balance each other out—if your kin are more demanding, you need less control from parents, while if there is a lot from parents, you need less demanding kin (Taylor et al., 2012). In a digital world, it is incredibly difficult to monitor and understand the child’s exact context and assess the level of risk when the context is also digital (and, in some cases, invisible to parents and caregivers). This can potentially create more difficulty in determining how much control one needs to effectively monitor their kids. In addition, kids may respond differently to surveillance and control depending on their age and the context in which the surveillance is levied. When kids are younger and the purpose is surveillance, the relationship between parents and kids suffers (Padilla-Walker et al., 2012). In older adolescents who feel that they are retaining their autonomy, the goal is communication, not surveillance. Therefore, they tend to report more positive outcomes (Coyne et al., 2014).
We also expect to be surveilled, and our children are being raised under the burden of this expectation. Just today, my son and I (KH) were in a small roadside shop, and he started looking around to see if he could find the cameras. Further, people’s behavior changes when they are being surveilled (Simons, Beltramo, Blalock, & Levine, 2017). This is part of what we do with SNSs like Twitter—we edit, articulate differently, delete, and post strategically, constantly aware of the audience around us (Papacharissi, 2012). Known as the Hawthorne effect, the principle describes the way in which others being observed begin to act in more socially appropriate ways upon the knowledge they are being observed. The way in which we surveil across technology is no different. The change in kids’ behavior under surveillance is particularly true for children in the age of digital surveillance. Kids have even figured out how to behave when they know that they are on camera. When cameras are in the classroom, children adjust their behavior to exhibit less creativity and have less spontaneous interactions with others.
As cellphone technologies increase in our homes, families have to respond in certain ways (Hodge et al., 2012). As with most things with children, they emulate and model how to interact with the world around them from their primary caregivers. They learn how to develop relationships, how to talk, how to show affection, etc. The same is true with phone usage. Children watch their parent’s phone behavior and emulate it. They are able at very young ages to replicate their parent’s phone behavior. You have probably seen young kids grab their parent’s phone. They are able to swipe, delete, open windows, and perform simple tasks, etc. Parents can teach children how to manage their phones in ways that are responsible, not only by overseeing their phone usage, but also by also modeling appropriate and balanced usage ourselves. Parents have to send better messages by establishing better mobile phone usage themselves— and modeling that behavior for their children (Hefner, Knop, Schmitt, & Vorderer, 2018).
Part of how to solve this might be through rule setting and through negotiation of the rules. Certainly not every family will be able to have devices for each individual in the system or agree on how a particular device should be used. Ley et al., 2013 noted some family conflict may emerge around who gets to use what device and under what circumstances. Parents who are more highly educated are more likely to monitor their children’s devices (Wang, Bianchi, & Raley, 2005). Schofield-Clark (2013) emphasizes setting rules around family time, such as making family time a priority. In her text, she even provides a media agreement for family members, which clearly outlines the limits of media usage in a family system. Such an agreement is less about setting rules for media, and more about balancing family time with media time, generating a sense of connection both with and without media, and changing the conversation around technology in the family.
Digital family communication affects our families and relationships. Just as there are differences in how literate certain people are with technologies, there are also differences in how parents choose to use some of these technologies to monitor their children. Surveillance is clearly a huge issue in families related to technology. We are evolving into families that are constantly under surveillance—from one another. Negotiation of these rules and boundaries will be critical as the technologies increase their capacity to eavesdrop.
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