Late Adolescents’ Perceptions of a Digital Generation Gap and Perceived Parent-Child Relations

Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to determine if late adolescents (18-25 year olds) perceived differences between their own knowledge about interactive technology and what they thought their parents knew about the same technology. Secondly, the study sought to understand how differences in these perceived technology were related to adolescent perceptions about their interactions with their parents. The parent-child relationship characteristics of interest in this study were parent-child quality time, parent-child conflict, and parents’ knowledge of their childrens’ behaviors. Late adolescents did perceive generational differences in technology knowledge in the areas of video chat, cell phones, general social networking, Twitter, and email. Late adolescents indicated that they thought they knew more about each of these technologies when compared to what they thought their parents knew. These differences in knowledge are referred to as a digital generation gap. This was the first study to quantify this perceived digital generation gap. Results indicated that when a perceived digital generation gap was present, late adolescents reported different amounts of quality time, conflict, and parental-knowledge of their behaviors within their parent-child relationships. For example, when late adolescents perceived they had more knowledge than their mothers about basic email technology, they also reported that their mothers had less knowledge about their behaviors. As a whole, this research project moves a step forward in identifying how interactive technology is influencing parent-child relationships