oa De impact van ouderschapsstijlen op de ontwikkeling van sociale mediageletterdheid bij adolescenten

The impact of parenting styles on the development of social media literacy

While a lot of research on social media tends to focus on either the benefits or risks of social media for adolescents, scholars have paid less attention to how adolescents actually use these media. In this paper, we focus on the impact of parenting styles on the development of adolescents’ social media literacy concerning the use of Facebook. Our research consists of a large-scale survey with a sample of 1,319 adolescents and 27 in-depth interviews. We use the perceived parenting styles to investigate adolescents’ use of social media in general and their use of Facebook in particular. When looking at levels of social media literacy concerning Facebook, we find significant differences between teenagers who encounter authoritative or permissive parenting styles; adolescents whose parents adopt an authoritative style score better on items related to critical skills, while respondents with permissive parents have more freedom in their use of Facebook and score better on technical competencies.