The Bottom-Up Technology Transmission From Children to Parents: How Gender Challenges Traditional Socialization Patterns

• In Event: How I Met My Mother’s Media: Media, Changes, and the Life Cycle

Abstract

Socialization research argues that parents are the primary agents of socialization. However, this intergenerational socialization is not totally unidirectional. Current approaches conceptualize the process as bidirectional and interactive where parents and children influence each other. Regarding digital media, young people may become key brokers in including older generations in the digital environment. The evidence suggests that this phenomenon is gendered. Three different studies conducted between 2010 and 2014 that included surveys and in-depth interviews to dyads of parents and children in the US and Chile revealed that mothers are more likely to receive help from their children. Also, boys are more likely than girls to help both parents to use technologies. In sum, these brokering roles open up opportunities to redraw the traditional top-down socialization processes. Also, the adoption of ICTs into the household suggests a gendered construction of technologies and a gendered approach of family socialization.

Author

• Teresa Correa, Universidad Diego Portales