DISTRACTED PARENTING: EXCESSIVE PARENTAL UTILIZATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS IMPACT ON THE COMMUNICATION AND RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS

Abstract

The present research is an attempt to explore the topic “Distracted Parenting: Excessive parental utilization o social media and its impact on the communication and the relationship between parents and their children. The research was exploratory in nature. Phenomenological approach of qualitative research was used to carry out the current research. The population of the research was all those parents who excessively utilize social media and other technological devices or gadgets. In this study purposive sampling was used. The semi-structured interviews were conducted by the researcher for the purpose of data collection. Data collected by the researcher who conducted semi-structured interviews from 10 participants that were those parents who have technological devices and use social media for specific period of time (as both researcher and the supervisor set the criteria that the data was collected from those parents who utilize social media for minimum 4-5 hours per day or maximum from this as “The 2018 Rescue Time study of 11,000 users showed that average smart-phone usage is 3 hours and 15 minutes.” In a survey conducted by Edison Research “The mean count for the hours respondents spent on browsing social media is 3.6 hours).”Both male and female contributed in data collection. Demographic characteristics like gender, age and occupation were also included. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the current study. After data collection, researcher transcribed the interviews and then created codes, categories and themes from that transcription.