Social Media as More Than a Peer Space: College Freshmen Encountering Parents on Facebook

Abstract

Social networking sites, first embraced by youth, have become increasingly popular among older generations. With more parents joining the sites, young people today are likely to encounter their parents on these platforms. However, there is limited information about how youth respond to the changing landscape, especially during the transition to a residential college, when parental support is particularly important but parent-child interaction may be disrupted by geographical distance. Drawing on literature of college transition, youth's relationship with parents, and "context collapse," this study explores how college freshmen react to parents' participation in Facebook. Fifty-one semistructured interviews were conducted with 28 first-year students attending a major residential U.S. university (age M = 18.14, SD = 0.45; 50% female; 75% White, 11% multiethnic, 7% Asian, and 7% Latino). Findings showed that college freshmen overwhelmingly accepted parents and family adults as their Facebook Friends and offered them equal access as that offered to peers. Facebook provided a space for college freshmen and parents to bond and express affections, although freshmen sometimes considered family adults as being overresponsive or overreactive to Facebook posts. The implications of "friending" parents on Facebook

Adolescents’ daily face-to-face and computer-mediated communication: Associations with autonomy and closeness to parents and friends.

“…Previous correlational studies do show that adolescents who more frequently text (Padilla-Walker, Coyne, & Fraser, 2012) and use social media (Coyne, Padilla-Walker, Day, Harper, & Stockdale, 2013;Yang, 2016) with parents have greater feelings of closeness with parents.…”

Social media, rituals, and long-distance family relationship maintenance: A mixed-methods systematic review

“…Family tagged their absent members in Facebook posts to include them in celebrations and nostalgic photographs (Cabalquinto, 2018c(Cabalquinto, , 2019. Young adults actively used Facebook to share their lives with family and simultaneously implemented privacy features to hide posts that could damage their desired self-presentation to family authority figures (Smith et al, 2012;Yang, 2018;Yoon, 2016). For those with strained parent-child relationships, communication via Facebook was valued for its semi-public nature.…”

“…The virtual co-presence of absent members via audiovisual calls is encouraged for special events to facilitate emotional connection (Neustaedter et al, 2015). Absent family members are tagged in Facebook posts about these events to create and maintain shared family values (e.g., Cabalquinto, 2018bCabalquinto, , 2019Yang, 2018). These adaptative continuances SOCIAL MEDIA, RITUALS, AND FAMILIES 8 of family rituals do not provide the same satisfaction as being physically present with each other but do help members to feel connected (Bacigalupe and Bräuninger, 2017).…”

“…Positivity. Families display positive communication behaviour through a myriad of methods including cheerful photographs, messages, posts, conversations, the use of cute emojis, Facebook likes, and GIFs (Cabalquinto, 2019;Ivan and Hebblethwaite, 2016;Rea et al, 2015;Shiau, 2015;Yang, 2018;Yoon, 2016). Individuals filter their communication to remove worrying information that might concern distant family members (Acedera and Yeoh, 2019;Ahn, 2017;Cabalquinto, 2018b;Pustułka, 2015;Rea et al, 2015).…”

“…The balance of maintaining kinship ties, preserving privacy, and managing impressions in a collapsed context such as Facebook requires careful organization. Some individuals-particularly young adults-perform impression management by accepting friend requests from senior family adults, then restrict that person's access to their newsfeed, or restrict their visible activity by removing tagging privileges of friends (Ohashi et al, 2017;Smith et al, 2012;Yang, 2018;Zhao, 2019). People manage their identity by sharing prudently curated photos, or carefully preparing their physical appearance before direct video communication to deliver an impression of success and well-being to the family (Shiau, 2015;Sinanan et al, 2018).…”