my parents are my friends on facebook

International Conference on Communication, Media, Technology and Design 24 - 26 April 2014, Istanbul Turkey

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My Parents are My Friends Friends on Facebook Bahire Efe zad Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, Eastern Mediterranean University Agah Gm Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, Eastern Mediterranean University ABSTRACT Social Network Sites (SNS), particularly Facebook, have become the most popular platform for socialization recently. The widespread use of Facebook added new dimensions to peoples social lives. Research into Facebook is mostly conducted with college students. The present study seeks to explore teenagers reaction to having their parents as their Facebook friends and also their reaction to their parents being Facebook friends with their children's peers. The study is designed as a qualitative study and data have been collected through in-depth interviews with the teenagers, focus groups with the families of the teenagers and analysis of teenagers Facebook pages. In the study, it is found out that girls are more sympathetic towards having their parents as their Facebook friends. Also, girls are more positive about having their parents as the friends of their real life friends on Facebook. Parallel to former research, it is observed that, provided that the teenagers feel secure in their relationships with their parents, Facebook boosts their relationship further. As natives of the Internet age, teenagers not only make use of the World Wide Web (WWW) extensively, but also they feel comfortable towards the use of new technology. Despite the belief that children learn a lot, if not almost about everything from their parents, and thus parents stand as authority figures; when the new technology is the case, teenagers know a lot more and are better users of new technology. Prensky (2001) classifies people as digital natives and digital immigrants based on the age and ability of users. This suggests that young generation are digital natives whereas parents are digital immigrants. According to this definition, younger generation know the language of new technology better, and thus feels at home with new developments. Based on this distinction, power relations at home change. Children feel powerful to comment and critique if not teach their parents on new technology related matters. Since they acknowledge themselves more knowledgeable, they feel free to make strong comments on their parents actions. This is very much valid for the use of Facebook. The present study seeks to explore the reaction of the teenagers towards their parents provided that the parents become Facebook friends with their children and their children's real life friends. Popularity of SNS, particularly Facebook, stands as one of the milestones of the new millennium. After its launch in 2004 as a student project in Harvard University in the United States of America, Facebook diffused into the world quickly. Currently, Facebook stands as the most popular Social Network Site all over the world. In a short time like a decade, almost everyone who has access to the Internet or has a smart phone has a Facebook account. This common use might lead to some unwanted confusions and conflict in the lives of family members and lead to some conflicts between parents and children. Family members all are involved in a variety of relationships in different contexts. Despite being the first socialization milieu, sharing the same house with the other members of the family and school and other places with friends, such a distinction does not exist on Facebook. In other words, there is only one virtual arena where people meet: on their Facebook pages. Once on the Facebook, the parents have the opportunity of becoming friends of their childrens real life friends. Thus, parents have access to the most if not all of the communication among their friends and activities they do. This particular situation causes a problem for teenagers. In actual life, their families and friends are in separate locations. They meet their families at home and their friends outside. On Facebook, their families and circle of friends get together. Teenagers would like to separate their families from their peers. When their parents join in as their Facebook friends, they feel that their parents interfere with their private lives. This situation leads to different solutions like blocking the parents, asking the parents not to include their childrens friends as their own Facebook friends or asking their parents not to write comments on their children's Facebook friends' postings. The present study seeks to explore teenagers concerns when their parents become Facebook friends with their childrens real life friends. LITERATURE REVIEW Social Network Sites (SNS) started in the late 1990's and flourished with the new millennium. SNS are defined as:web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system (boyd and Ellison; 2007:210). The focus of the majority of research into Facebook has been on college students. There are only a few studies in relation to teenagers' Facebook use; these studies are mostly concerned about the privacy settings in Facebook. Research conducted in the USA point out that teenagers are vulnerable to online privacy risks (Schonberg, 2005); mostly these risks come from on-line markets (Boveda-Lambie & Hair, 2012). Kanter, Afifi and Robbins(2012) draw our attention to the Impact of Parents Friending Their Young Adult Child on Facebook on Perceptions of Parental Privacy Invasions and Parent-Child Relationship Quality. In the research article Kanter, Afifi and Robbins (2012) point out that they conduct an experimental research with 118 parents and young adult children who are college students. In the study, parents in the experimental group were asked to create a Facebook account and became Facebook friends with their children for two months. For those in the control group, parents were not Facebook friends with their children. They report that, having their parents as Facebook friends resulted in decreased


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conflict in the parent-child relationship. They also noted that in relationships where parent and child were rather conflicted, becoming Facebook friends improved parent-child relationships. Despite teenagers extensive use of Facebook, research with this age group is very new and few. Liu, Yin, Huang (2013) conduct a study with 13-15 years old high school students in Taiwan in order to explore their relationships with their friends, parents and teachers on Facebook interaction. They mention that facebook.com point out that more than half of Taiwanese 13-15 years old teenagers have Facebook pages. Through the survey they conducted with 673 teenagers, they found out that those teenagers who use Facebook with high frequency can improve their interpersonal communication with their peers more than those who use it with low frequency. Provided that the teenagers used Facebook a lot, their interpersonal relationships with their parents and teachers may weaken. The results of the study also point out that when the duration of Facebook use is not taken into consideration; teenagers' real life interpersonal relationships are stronger than virtual interpersonal relationship no matter it is with friends, parents or teachers. The study suggests that parents should monitor teenagers Facebook use. In a similar vein, Feng and Xie (2014:153) conduct a research in the USA in relation to teenagers' and their parents' concern for privacy while using the SNS. Indeed, in the capitalist economy of the USA, on-line markets find teenagers as a possible target market. Privacy concern of the parents towards their teenager children has been a popular research area (Lenhart & Madden, 2007; Willard, 2007; Herring, 2008; Ou, 2011; Boveda-Lambie & Hair, 2012). Based on the former research, Feng and Xie (2014:159) report that in the study, they found that parents are more sensitive towards their children's privacy settings on SNS. Also, they report a positive relationship between teenagers' and parents privacy concerns. Secondly, SNS usage is found to be another significant socializing agent that boosts teenagers' level of privacy concern about exposing their information to marketers on SNS. Thirdly, they point out that teenagers whose parents have higher educational level are more concerned about their on-line privacy. Fourthly, they note that teenagers who are more concerned about their on-line privacy marked their profiles as private or partially private (p.160). Research into SNS, particularly Facebook is ultimately conducted through quantitative methodology. The widespread use of Facebook requires to be looked at through qualitative methodology which will provide in-depth, rich data. Based on this, the present study is conducted through qualitative methodology and sets out to explore the teenagers use of Facebook, their reactions to their parents when they become friends with the childrens peers; the reasons for this reaction and precautions or solutions teenagers suggest for the situation. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The present study is designed within the phenomenological paradigm of social science research. For this purpose, qualitative methodology is favored and data is collected through in-depth interviews, analysis of Facebook pages and focus groups. Therefore, in the study methodological triangulation is done. Data are collected from three boys and three girls (age 13-18) and their families in order to check if there are any differences between the reactions of boys and girls. Data are analyzed thematically. ANALYSIS Initially, the in-depth interviews were conducted with the teenagers. The interviews were conducted in an informal medium in order to establish rapport with the participants. Interviews were not recorded or transcribed; instead short notes were taken by the researchers. Six in-depth interviews, three with the boys and three with the girls, were conducted. The participants were ensured that their names will be kept and informed that the talks will be analyzed and reported as a research article. Both boys and girls mentioned that did not feel that parents were interfering with their privacy by being their friends on Facebook. The boys and girls reactions showed some differences with respect to having their mothers and fathers as their Facebook friends. Girls mentioned that they welcomed becoming friends with both of their parents on Facebook. Yet, all three boys pointed out that they did not mind their mother but had some reservations towards their fathers seeing their postings on Facebook. One of the boys admitted that, from time to time, he blocked his father; however, he was concerned that his father would be upset and their relationship would be influenced negatively by being blocked, he removed the block. The participants mentioned that they did not mind if their parents became friends with their real life friends on Facebook either. Yet, they mentioned that the friendship proposal should not come from the parents but from their real life friends. Also, they mentioned that they did not mind if their parents liked what their real life friends shared. The boys also showed strong determinism that their parents should not write any comment to their friends. Girls, on the other hand, mentioned that they did not mind if their parents commented on their real life friends pages/postings. It was also revealed that fathers kept a distance with their children's real life friends on Facebook but mothers are more involved and write comments to their children's real life friends' postings. In this case, both boys and girls point out that they find this activity unbearable. In the focus groups conducted with the families (children and both parents), the children showed their attitude towards having their parents as their Facebook friends and also having their parents as the Facebook friends of their peers. The participants mentioned that their parents could be their Facebook friends but should keep quiet and not write any comments towards their peers. Both girls and boys are more positive about having their mothers than their fathers on their Facebook. The analysis of the Facebook pages indicated that the children are rather more active than their parents. Thus, having inactive parents suggest that children do not make comments on their parents activities. By being inactive, parents give the message that they do not interfere. The analysis of the Facebook pages of the teenagers proved that teenagers mostly share photographs and sports related comments. Parents, on the other hand, mostly use Facebook just to see what other's postings are and are mostly passive.


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CONCLUSIONS Becoming friends with their parents on Facebook causes confusion between two separate lives: family and friends. The parents involved in the study are between 40-50 years old. This choice is done on purpose for it is difficult to separate parents younger than this age as digital natives or immigrants. Qualitative methodology employed for the study provides rich data into teenagers concerns about having their parents as their friends on Facebook. It should be taken into consideration that teenagers expect limited participation from the parents and write unseen rules of virtual participation. The parents should know how to act and the children are there to set the rules. The present study took place in North Cyprus. In this context on-line marketing is not very popular. Cyprus being an island and shipping and tax applied when entering the country makes on-line shopping problematic. Thus, parents primary concern is not opening teenagers Facebook information to on-line marketers. The concern here is more social and is related to suitability of the behavior. In conclusion, technology is an area in which young generation feel at home as digital natives and are better than their parents. Therefore, they feel that they are in a position to set the limits for their parents as far as their own real life friends are concerned. Research up to now takes into consideration parent-child relationships based on the assumption that parents act authoritatively. The present study, however, looks at the parental interference from the teenager's perspective. Teenagers definitely have a word in relation to virtual participation. The problem of socializing in the virtual world is that it is an arena where there are no segments. This makes the relationships more complex. It is obvious that digital natives know the appropriate behaviors and behave more happily in this virtual environment. Further research could consider looking at how parents feel when their children become friends with their real life friends on Facebook. REFERENCES Boveda-Lambie, A. M., & Hair, N.(2012). Advertising Versus Invertising: The Influence of Social Media. B2C Efforts on

Consumer Attitudes and Brand Relationships. In Angeline, G. Close (ED). Online Consumer Behavior: Theory and Research in Social Media, Advertising and e-tail. 209-236. New York, NY: Routhledge.

boyd, D. M., Ellison, N. M. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. 13:1. 210-230.

Feng, Y., Xie, W. (2014). Teens' Concern for Privacy When Using Social Networking Sites: An Analysis of Socialization Agents and Their Relationships With Privacy-Protecting Behaviors. Computers in Human Behavior. 33. 153-162.

Herring, S. (2008). Questioning the Generational Divide: Technological Exoticisms and Adult Constructions of Online Youth Identity. In D. Buckingham (ED.) Youth, Identity and Digital Media. Cambridge, UK. MIT Press.

Kanter, M., Afifi, T., & Robbins, S. (2012).Impact of Parents Friending Their Young Adult Child on Facebook on Perceptions of Parental Privacy Invasions and Parent-Child Relationship Quality. Journal of Communication. 62. 900-917.

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Liu, S., Yin, M., Huang, T. (2013). Adolescents' Interpersonal Relationships with Friends, Parents, and Teachers When Using Facebook for Interaction. Creative Education. 4:5. 335-339.

Ou, M. (2011). Generation Gap = Gap in Online Privacy Perceptions? The Case for Singaporean Youths and Their Parents. Papers presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association. Boston. USA.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives Digital Immigrants.On the Horizon.9:5. 1-5. Sconberger, J. (2005). Emerging Identity Theft Market Targets Teens as Newest Niche. http://newshour-

tc.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/idtheft_8-29.pdf. Willard, N. (2007). Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Cruelty, Threats, and

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my parents are my friends on facebook

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