Tecnhology and social media in communication between parents and children

Abstract

The advancement of technology and social media today give huge impacts on children’s especially on teenagers’ life. Nowadays, teenagers spend most of their times on surfing the Internet, playing video games and playing with their smartphones rather than interacting with their family members, especially their parents. This may lead to lack of quality in communication between teenagers and their parents. This issue had been addressed in recent studies which agreed on the excessive use of technology as the source of gap in communication between family members and also stunt their social development. This paper aims to explain the concept of media and technology as well as to describe its impact on communication among family in Malay community. The theory of family system is used in discussing the self-development aspect of teenagers in the perspective of interaction and communication as a result of media and technology presence. In addition, suggestions on practical strategy for parents are presented in order to provide them with better understanding about the proper way of using media and technology in today’s challenging modern culture. It is hoped that parents would then have media understanding so that this does not negatively affect their communication with children. This paper is hoped to be used as a model for teenagers and parents references to overcome the obstacles that come along with the development of today’s media and technology.