Niewe media in het gezin

The use of new media by children and their parents could influence the social relationship they have with each other. Because young adults in the age 16-18 years use their mobile phones and smartphones all the time, contact with family members could become less. Thereby, if their parents use new media and smartphones as well, contact from both sides could become less because there is less time for each other. On the other side, it could also add an extra dimension to the social relationship. It is a way of communication on a whole new level, which was not possible before. Parents could also use new media to look after their kids and see what they are doing online as well as being more involved. Because of all these possible consequences of new media use, this thesis is about the actual elaboration of new media use on the social relationship of young adults who still live at home with their parents and their parents. Earlier studies show that a good, healthy social relationship between children and parents consists of a few conditions (Van der Pas, 1996); unconditional love, trust, communication, involvement and time. This thesis compares the social relationship between parents and their children of families where parents and children both use new media and families where the children use new media but the parents do not. The results show that the use of new media in general creates some sort of tension and sometimes even fights about things that are said on Facebook or about the time spend behind the computer. Besides that, the use of new media influences the atmosphere at home in a negative way. But all put together, the use of new media does not affect the actual social relationship between parents and their children. Both sorts of families, where the parents use new media as well as families where the parents don’t use it, trust each other and communicate a lot. The use of new media in families does have a negative effect on the condition time. This thesis shows that families where parents do use new media spend less time with their children in comparison to parents who do not use new media.