Parents’ Restrictions on Their Children’s Use of Information Technologies and Their Reasons From The Perspective of Their Children

Abstract

Recent advances in information technologies and their accessibility with ease have shaped the relations among the individuals and started to affect the social structure. These technologies have made parents’ roles more important. Parents’ attitudes towards their children who are surrounded by digital technologies and how these attitudes are perceived by their children are particularly important. In this context, the aim of this study is to determine the parental restrictions imposed towards the information technology use of secondary school students and their reasons. In addition, the awareness of the children towards the reasons of restrictions imposed by their parents has also been investigated.  In this study, which is designed as a survey model, data were collected at different intervals to enable data diversity, conducted under the control of different researchers to enable researcher diversity, different data collection techniques were used to enable procedural diversity. The data were collected through “open-ended question form” and “semi-structured interview form”. For the analysis of the data, content analysis types; categorical data analysis and frequency analysis were employed. The results showed that mothers in particular, impose more restrictions and especially on girls. Mobile phone is the most restricted technology. Restrictions towards applications cause restrictions towards the technology that the applicationsare installed in some cases. Internet based applications are the most commonly restricted applications and parents impose restrictions on the use of social networks most. The main reason why the parents impose restrictions arise from the concern that their children’s educational activities, relations and responsibilities within the family, social lives, and their health might be negatively affected because of the time they spend using information technologies and their applications.