I like the ideas in Eric Qualman's book Socialnomics
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8)
But I think he is a little overzealous in his statement:
It connects parents to their kids like never before.
At this point, parents might see a lot more of what their kids have to say. But I don't think this will last. Kids will more than likely hide any material that they don't want their parents to see via something like Facebook's group function or some other control on social networking sites.
Social media sites do help people connect and they help form communities; and maybe if a family is geographically spread out across the country or the world, or if a kid goes to college, it could even help a family stick together. But I don't think it will have much of an impact on parent-child relationships at home. Parents have the opportunity to interact with their children face to face and this is what really forms a bond between parent and child. I don't think that social media is going to change much here.
It's has been proven that activities like eating dinner together help families and students develop. But do you think social media will help children and parents connect?
Hey Amy,
ReplyDeleteGood question. I thought the same thing when I was reading the article (ie that kids will activate some sort of privacy-blocker so that their parents can't get access to all of their activities, all the time), but then I read the bit about parents requiring access before they will allow their children to use social media sites. If that is the case, I do think SM will help parents and kids connect, especially if they have some shared interests (ie are fans of similar brands), shared friends, and can talk about something they both saw on a news feed. I can see someone saying "did you see what Aunt Mary posted, that YouTube video was hilarious!" and that will hopefully give some more fuel to parent-child similarities and conversation-starters. We'll see what happens...
I'm thinking of this from my experience. I have a 14 year old brother who is "friends" with my mom on Facebook and I know that they do not exactly share info this way. If my mom tried to control his access to things, it wouldn't make much difference. And I think this is true of most of his friends too.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it will work for some people though.
I don't think social media improves the parent-child relationship. Thinking of teenagers, I would guess that it probably strains the relationships more than it helps.
ReplyDeleteI agree it might be better for families when kids are older and spread out, but when they are younger and still living together it seems like a recipe for disaster.
As Dan said, i don't think social media would improve the parent-child relationship that much; imagine that your parents have facebook and friend requested you; you wouldn't that pleased to accept the request. However, it would't either make it worse i believe it totally depends on how parent-child deal with social media together.
ReplyDelete