How is Social Media changing Family Relationships? | Dr. Vasudha Neel Mani l

Technology does have its pros, but nobody can deny that the cons that come with it are starting to become a major problem. Especially when it comes to the internet, from parents to kids, everyone has multiple social media accounts which keeps them engaged for long periods of time. People post almost anything on their accounts, from pictures of events to minute things like telling their friends and followers that they just got their nails done.

Family systems, taking into consideration the role that parents’ perceptions about the impact of social media on family systems, whether positive or negative, can exert in the relationship between their perceived collective family efficacy and an open communication among family members, It has already been widely acknowledged that social media and ICTs make human social interactions and relationships more complex; however, scientific results still showed conflicting results about whether such complexity can have a positive, enriching, role or rather than a negative, detrimental, one with reference to family interactions, even more when the family system includes adolescent children due to the evolutionary tasks they have to face up to, which can impact on family relationships and interactions temporarily or permanently 

family members perceive it and how much they feel confident about their family managing daily challenges to achieve positive relationships, healthy interactions, and open communications. Indeed, the results show that that being confident in one’s family capabilities to handle daily tasks, stress, and challenges associates with a more positive perception about the impact social media can have on family system and the relationships within it, as feeling able to manage family daily tasks and challenges could foster the feeling about being able to manage the adaptation to the increasing social media use among family members too. This could make family members perceive, at last, these new technologies as opportunities for increased family cohesion, adaptability, interactions, planning, and open communications, rather than as threats to positive family functioning and relationships. In addition to family collective efficacy, also such positive perception can further promote open communications among family members, maybe because if social media are perceived as opportunities and useful tools they can offer further ways to maintain and improve relationships among family members

When parents are aware of their family’s ability to manage social media-related changes in family functioning and habits (e.g., redefinition of roles and boundaries, new kinds of intimacy, communications, rituals,), this can foster their perception about potentialities and new opportunities coming from social media use to keep in touch with their children, most of all when they are adolescents and are facing up their individualization process: if parents are able not to make their children feel they are invading their privacy or being oppressive and hyper-controlling, and to discuss with them how social media should be used to reduce the risks, social media can at last strengthen family ties, promote and facilitate discussions, and foster more secure conditions for adolescents to obtain greater autonomy from their parents and for parents to let them face up to these situations