How Technology Has Impacted Patterns of Communication Between Parents and Children - Research Proposal Example

? How Technology Has Impacted Patterns of Communication between Parents and Children Compared to the pre-industrial era, the current society exists in an error of disintegration and erosion of social values. Technological advancement is the main reason behind this development and still threatens to worsen things if not observed carefully. The development in technology has witnessed maturity of digital children who do not have any sense of social principles. Parents alike have opted to follow suit to an extent of being able to manage and monitor the moves made by children within their respective societies. Social media accessed through computers and smart phone that are all over expose people to many information with any restriction. Televisions purposed for entertainment also show programs without any practical restriction to the content viewers. In light of the above, this paper will present a research proposal on the impacts of technology on communication patterns of parents and children. In so doing, the paper will begin by providing introducing the issue, and then draw the background of the issue. The paper will then present a research question and hypothesis from where it will proceed to categorically investigated literature review. The paper will then draw a framework of research will carried and finally end with an explicit conclusion. Introduction Communication that involves exchange of information and ideas through common symbols, languages and body movements is an essential and crucial aspect of human life. Human beings and perhaps all living creatures have their own methods and techniques of communicating with each towards coordination and programming of activities within their respective societies. Methods and techniques of interpersonal communication among human beings have undergone serious and rapid revolution over short time. In the preindustrial age, human beings relied on physical face to face communication as appropriate way of exchanging valid and direct information. Some societies also used sound from drums, horns, whistles, and smoke to pass specific coded information. These changed during the postindustrial age when technological advancement introduced electronic communication. As years lapse, technology also advances from one level to another integral level. These advancements in technology have not left behind integration in communication technology. Technological advancement and integration have seen introduction and continued innovation of mediums and devices of communication such as telephone lines, wireless networks, waves, internet, satellite, fiber optic, and stationary telephones, mobile phones, televisions, radios, computers, and smart phones among others. The developments in the communication technology go hand in hand with changes in communication patterns among human beings. These changes have seen development of serious communication problem between the adults of the past communication technology and the youths of the contemporary communication technologies. Background of the Study The coming of computer technology introduced new feature that necessitated actual and abstract change in the pattern of communication between children and their parents. Computers brought about as well as creating a sense of a totally new generation that is incompatible with the previous generations. The ecstasy that the dot com generation received computer technology threatened and in some cases broken the initially compact family ties. As obvious, communication defines the actual base for development of family and friendship ties. For the ties to be effective there must be an appropriate pattern of communication accepted and embraced by every party. Proper parent-child ties depend on the pattern of communication employed by the parties. It is worth mentioning that families that existed in last two decades or that have not entirely embraced the current technology have strong and good ties. This is because, parents and children understand the need to be physically together and engage in one on one communication. This is in total contradiction of the current families that have fully embraced technological advancements, which have confirmed absolute ruin and compromise to their ties. The current families have their members owning computer devices and have direct access to communication features like face book, twitter, Google, YouTube and MySpace among others. Families also enjoy the privileges to television sets, videos, radios and other mediums and forms of digital communication. These new techniques and mediums of communication have proved to consume greatest portion of human time, which would otherwise be essential in nurturing relationships to create peaceful and right societies. Research Question How has technology impacted the patterns of communication between parents and their children? Hypothesis The rapid technological advancements as witnessed in the current world have negatively affected the communication patterns between parents and their children. Literature Review Literature review is a type of discussion that tends to research and excavate explicit information and massages about particular subject or topic of research. Literature review helps the researchers get to the bottom of research by exhaustively exploring sources of information related to the research question defining the purpose of the study. Technological advancements have really impacted negatively on the communication patterns between parents and their children. Technological outputs like Twitter, Face Book and short messages that are easily accessible through mobile phones and laptops have proved great potential to distract parent-child communication patterns. Traditionally, parents took as their sole responsibilities to take care of their children by offering the highest attention possible demanded by the children (Eisend, 2002). Parental love was measurable through the nature and urgency of response offered by parents to their children on demand. Parents desired to be always near their children and monitor their conducts through very active and reactive communication patterns. This has however changed since the wide of technological devices and medium of communication. According to Kaur and Medury (2011), researchers argue that the current communication technologies have totally compromised the quality of parenting deserved by children. In so doing, researchers describe instances where parents remain glued and concentrated on their smart phones and laptops either texting, engaging in twitter of face book at the expense of child’s attention. Parents tend to be carried away by these modern technological devices to an extent that they cannot hear and heed to the attention sought by their children. Considering that children at the tender ages of below seven years tend to learn most of things during this time, they require a lot of parental attention to answer many of their questions and detractions (Mallinckrodt & Mizerski, 2007). Denial of attention by parents who instead concentrates on technological devices, have left children in sad moods to view their parents as uncaring and unworthy as they feel hurt, aggrieved and unwanted by their parents. Eventually, children move out to seek new friends who can show them compassion and care (Eisend, 2002). The next thing is that they move out to seek new friends who end up teaching them new things that are very different from the desires of the parents. This then results in a much distorted communication patterns between parents and their children, which may even ruin the relationship. However effects, parents have no option but to learn advancing technologies while there is time to avoid being frustrated by their children upon growing up. Being that children grow together with development in technology, they tend to know a lot of things unknown to the somewhat naive parents. In the demonstration of Wallenius et al. (2007), this disparity gives children special opportunity to teach their parents about certain aspect of technology unknown to the parents. When children discover that they can teach the otherwise superior parents and ensure that they understand the basic concepts, they tend to feel some sense of command. According to Fulk (1993), such feelings make children have little respect for their parents and expect parents to comply and respect everything they say. This then reverses the pattern of communication from up-downwards to down-upwards. When this becomes the case, parents begin to encounter unavoidable difficulties to convince and educate their children against certain aspects of life considered negative within the given society. The difficulties occur due to children persisting on what they learnt on their own, and because of the perceived inferiority of the parent they tend to reject almost every advice offered. Technology use has also impacted negatively on language and thus the communication patterns between parent and their children. Distortion of the initially official language perhaps favored by parents has been on the increase alongside the use of technological devices like smart phone and computers (Hall, Patron, Peckover & White, 2010). To effectively communicate using Twitter, Face book, emails and texts, individuals need to understand the language trends and patterns used. Usually, the right language patterns involve the use of shortened phrases and abbreviations only understood to the users. Children and youths of the dot com generation are the main creators and manipulators of these languages. They do this to an extent that there occurs total dilapidation and change in the words and thus the language used (Hall, Patron, Peckover & White, 2010). In the process of using internet and related resources, children and youths end up adopting and assimilating unique linguistic symbols and signs unknown to the adult parents. Astonishingly, after long use and exposure to the internet language patterns, children and youths begin applying the same languages in their literal communication with their adult parents (Robert, 2009). This then result to serious misunderstanding and mismatch in the communication patterns between parents and the children. The problem compiles even further as adult parents find it difficult to learn the linguistic patterns of their children who also do not want to learn the language used by the adult parents. The entire consequence is distorted communication techniques that leave parents with no proper strategy to advice and monitor their children. Increasing exposure of children to computer technology and related resources has threatened to ruin the social relation and widen the gap between parents and their children. The ability children to freely access unrestricted internet information has seen them watch adult contents unfit for their age. Children have also found themselves engaging in online commercial activities and games that are bad for their age. Such early exposure to the materials has proved interesting and attractive to the children to an extent of robbing them time to be with parents (Lisa et al., 2011). This has therefore denied parents opportunity to sit their children down or watch over their behavior. The resultant effect has been breeding of children who grow without the necessary social values and direction, which in turn result to collisions with the parents in future. Early exposure of children to online pornographies and related material has forced parents to initiate early talks about sex for fear of possible misdirection of their children. This is a direct contradiction of the period when technology was scarce and parents could wait until children reach 10 year and above to begin initiating talks concerning sex. Televisions are other aspects of technology found to pose negative effects on the communication patterns between parents and their children. According Moscardelli and Catherine (2005) with reference to various research findings, responsiveness of parents to the children when watching television is very important to the children. Responsive parents struggles to explain various aspects of news, images and displays to their children when watching television. Parents achieve this by encouraging free interaction and questions with the child. It is during such activities that responsive parents identify communication mistakes in their children and facilitate corrections. Mittal et al. (2010) clarify that performing such close interactions and exchanges with children, enable parents to foster trust and self awareness that is in their children. Compared to when parents read book or play with toys, parents tend to bid little attention and concern to their parents when watching television. This has worked to frustrate and embarrass children as they find it hard to force their parents to appreciate their presence. Some children also tend to concentrate on televisions in the absence and presence of their parents. Too much concentration on television leaves children with little time to seek for parental attention and guidance. This leaves children to learn many things by themselves as shown on television (Shabeel, Nabeel & Waqas, 2012). Since they lack capabilities to differentiate well from bad, these children to take everything they see as the right knowledge to grasp. When these children view even inappropriate programs, they may begin to rebel against their parents when trying to persuade them away from what they learnt. Methods of Data Collection In bid to conduct proper research to validly test the hypothesis, the research will employ various methods of collecting data. The methods will include questionnaires, interviews, reading from internet sources and observation. Since the issue under research is of great social impetus, this research will target all people without discriminating along age groups, social status and sex. The research will cover children, school going youths and adult parents. Questionnaire The research will employ both the two techniques of questionnaire that include open and rigid questionnaires. Questionnaires will be presented to school going children capable of writing as well as parents and social scientists. Open questionnaires will include questions such as follows: A. What is your view as to the effect of internet and technology in general on parent-child relationships? B. How do you think parents should treat or handle the growing toddlers and youths? Rigid questionnaire on the other hand will include the following questions: A. Do you think that parenting techniques have changed with the rapidly advancing technology? a. Yes b. No B. Do you think that technology has ruined parent-child relationship as far as communication is concerned? a. Yes b. No C. Is there need for parents to control and monitor the use of technological devices by their children? a. Yes b. No Interviews Researchers will interview school going children and youths, parents and sociologist. To school going children and youths, the following questions will apply: 1) Do your parents own computers or smart phones? 2) How do frequent do you see them concentrating on the computers and smart phone? 3) How do the parents handle you whenever they concentrate on the computers and smart phones? 4) How do your parents behave or react to your concern when watching televisions? 5) Do your parents monitor and regulate the time you use the technological devices in your houses? To parents, the following questions will apply: 1) Do you own computers and smart phones? If yes how frequent do you use them when with your children nearby? 2) Do your children have access to, or own smart phones and/or computers? 3) Do you regulate the use of computers and television among your children? 4) When using smart phones, computers or watching television, do find it easy to respond to the attention raised by children? 5) What security measures do have for your children when using computers and related materials? 6) What behavior or changes to you detect in children whenever you concentrate on computers and televisions and refuse to respond to their concerns? 7) What unique behaviors that you did have during your childhood that manifests in your children? The following questions will apply to the sociologists and social scientists: 1) Do you detect any changes in the mode of parenting since the introduction and now widespread of technology? 2) What effects could parental focus on television and computer related material have on children? 3) What are the problems associated with parental negligence of their children in favor of technological devices? 4) Do you the introduction and now rapid development of technology has affected linguistic patterns? Observation Researchers in this study are professional psychologists and sociologists who can easily observe and detect problems or changes in the social norms and practices. Researchers will therefore attend various sporting shows and cinemas attended by parents alongside their children. Researchers will then observe and analyze the level of concentration of various parents on the sports and on their smart phones or laptops. Researchers will observe how parents in their concentrations respond to the concerns of their children. The researchers will also seek to observe the frequency at which parents turn to their parents as if giving directions on the progression of the sports. In so doing, researchers will also analyze and record behaviors and reactions of particular children in response to the manner in which their parents treat them. Conclusion As much as technological advancements have made life easy and efficient, they have caused and compiled serious problems to the social structures. Communication, which is the basic instrument for socialization has succumbed to the negative and positive aspects of technology. However, while observing from sociological point of view, technology has negatively impacted on the communication patterns specifically between parents and children. Introduction and integration of computer technology and its complementary materials has worked to expose children to unsafe contents and information that are dangerous to their growth. Concentration of parents to the same outputs of technology has seen them deny children the required attention and care. This has led to widening of parent-child bonds and ties to an extent of creating mismatch of communication patterns. The perceived inferiority of parents to technological advancements has seen children threaten to dominate over and control their parents. References Eisend, M. (2002). The internet as a new medium for the sciences? the effects of internet use on traditional scientific communication media among social scientists in Germany. Online Information Review, 26(5), 307-317. Fulk, J. (1993). Social construction of communication technology. Academy of Management Journal, 36(5), 921-921. Hall, C., Parton, N., Peckover, S., & White, S. (2010). Child-centric information and communication technology (ICT) and the fragmentation of child welfare practice in England. Journal of Social Policy, 39, 393-413. Kaur, A., & Medury, Y. (2011). Impact of the internet on teenagers' influence on family purchases. Young Consumers, 12(1), 27-38. Lisa, M. S., Katherine, H. C., Julia, A. G., & Sarah, T. L. (2011). Traditional and cyber aggressors and victims: A comparison of psychosocial characteristics. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 40(4), 392-404. Mallinckrodt, V., & Mizerski, D. (2007). The effects of playing an advergame on young children's perceptions, preferences, and requests. Journal of Advertising, 36(2), 87-100. Moscardelli, D., & Catherine Liston-Heyes. (2005). Consumer socialization in a wired world: The effects of internet use and parental communication on the development of skepticism to advertising. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 13(3), 62-75. Robert, S. W. (2009). 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