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Abstract
Parent–child relationships are redefined during early adolescence, as tweens become increasingly independent and begin to assert their autonomy. Because today’s youth are growing up in a digitally saturated world, investigating the technology use of tweens is key to understanding the changing dynamics in parent–child relationships in early adolescence. Through surveys (N = 79) and follow-up focus groups (N = 30) with middle school students, we investigated how tweens described and made sense of their technology use, how they responded to their parents’ rules about technology, and how they navigated technology-related conflicts at home. Tweens perceived a misalignment between their parents’ technology-related rules and their own purposes for using digital media, which they said created a tension between them and their parents. This exploratory study contributes new insight into how tweens relate their technology use to their interpretations of their parents’ rules and messages around technology.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Ligaya Scaff for her contribution to data collection. They would also like to thank the technology teacher at the middle school for opening her eighth-grade class to them for this study. This is unfunded work and the authors do not have any financial interest or benefit arising from the direct applications of their research.