Poster #91 - Sixth Through Eighth Graders’ and Their Parents’ Attitudes and Perspective Taking on Appropriate Texting Contexts

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Mobile phone use is one of the most frequent conflicts between parents and adolescents (Hiniker et al., 2016; McDaniel, 2019). This study assessed (a) young adolescents’ and their parent’s attitudes about appropriate mobile phone use, and (b) their ability to predict each other’s phone use attitude.
Forty-six young adolescents in 6th (N=20), 7th (N=14), and 8th (N=12) grade and one of their parents (N=46) read six hypothetical vignettes describing either an adolescent or parent using their mobile phone to send or reply to a text message in one of three contexts: at the dinner table, at a party, and during (home)work. Each vignette was followed by two questions: “How much do you agree or disagree that it’s okay for [vignette character] to do that?” and “How much would your parent/adolescent agree or disagree that it’s okay for [vignette character] to do that?” Participants responded to each question using a Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 7=strongly agree).
A 2 x 2 x 3 x 2 x 3 x 2 (Group x Phone User x Grade x Gender x Context x Perspective) ANOVA yielded significant main effects for participant age group, vignette phone user, adolescent grade, and context, as well as four 2-way interactions (context x grade; perspective x group; phone user x context; context x perspective) and five 3-way interactions (phone user x gender x group; phone user x grade x group; phone user x perspective x grade; phone user x perspective x group; perspective x gender x group).
Adults gave higher phone use appropriateness ratings than teens, and participants rated parent phone users as more appropriate than adolescent phone users. Eighth graders and their parents gave higher appropriateness ratings than 7th graders and their parents, and participants rated the (home)work context as most appropriate, followed by party, and then dinner.
Parents of adolescent girls rated parental phone use as more appropriate than adolescent phone use and gave higher ratings for parental phone use than did adolescent girls, but ratings of phone use did not differ for adolescent boys and their parents. Parents of 7th graders gave higher appropriateness ratings for parental phone use than for adolescent phone use, and 7th graders and their parents rated adolescent phone use as less appropriate than did 8th graders and their parents. Eighth graders and their parents rated phone use during dinner as more appropriate than 6th and 7th graders and their parents.
Teens thought parents would rate appropriateness lower than teens’ own ratings, and parents thought adolescents would rate appropriateness higher than parents’ own rating. When rating the parent’s perspective, teens gave lower appropriateness ratings than adults gave for their own perspective and, when also considering phone user, both teens and adults gave higher appropriateness ratings for parent phone users than adolescent phone users.
These results suggest that (a) although adolescents and their parents often view appropriate phone use similarly, they may expect each other to have different attitudes, and (b) ratings of appropriate phone use vary by gender and grade during early adolescence.

Author

• Stephanie J. Cleary, Northern Illinois University
  Presenting Author