Adolescents' response to parental Facebook friend requests: The comparative influence of privacy management, parent-child relational quality, attitude and peer influence
Abstract
As adolescents increasingly use smartphones to access the Internet, parental ability to monitor their online activities diminishes. An established surveillance technique ls for parents to 'friend' their adolescent children on social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook. However, adolescents need space to develop, and they use SNS to experiment with adjusting their self-image based on feedback received from network friends. So how do adolescents feel about parents sharing this space and what influences those feelings? This study explored these issues using Communications Privacy Management theory (Petronio, 2002) as the theoretical framework to investigate the relative influence of privacy management, relational quality and peer pressure. The study was conducted among 262 secondary school children living at home and recruited via their schools. Results showed that while privacy management, relational quality and peer influence were significantly related to adolescent attitudes to parental presence on Facebook only their attitude predicted friendship status. A picture emerged of adolescents in control of their SNS privacy who were largely indifferent to parental presence on Facebook. There was however, a sizable, peer-influenced minority, opposed to parental presence and for whom friendship may be counter-productive. While this study uncovered many unique associations relating to adolescent-parental Facebook friendship, further qualitative research is recommended to provide a deeper understanding of this complex subject.
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