Social Media in Lives of Parents and Children: Exploring Effects on Parents-Children Relationships

Abstract

Social media and its usage are one of the essential activities of this century. Many social media sites are there in the world, and they have millions of users. This research aims to explore the effects of social media usage on parents and children interpersonal relationships. Relationships among parents and children are an essential factor in having excellent bonding of family. The total numbers of respondents were 384, who were selected according to Morgan and Krejcie’s formula. Islamabad was the city where the survey was conducted. Probability sampling was used for this study. The study was based on the theory of Time displacement by Robert Putnam (1970). He argued that when we give more time to our virtual world, our time to our real-world will be less. Two hundred children and 184 parents were the respondents of this study. Results showed that most of the users are heavy users; they use social media more than 4 hours on a daily basis. The outcome revealed that Facebook is much admired social media site among users. According to results, 65% of respondents elaborated that social media unite families, and the rest of 35% said that they are against this statement. Furthermore, 73% of the total population responded that social media decreased face-to-face interaction between parents and children. On the other hand, 14% were neutral, and 11% were against this statement. According to results of hypothesis it has been found that both parents and children support positive aspects of social media usage. This study also finds out that heavy social media usage causes many troubles like sleeplessness, interest in the virtual world, and face-to-face interaction between children and parents. This study recommends the less usage of the virtual world and social sites to make strong relations in real life.