Communication Challenges of Parents and Their Adolescent Daughters With an Emphasis on Social Media Use: A Content Analysis Study

Challenge between parents and their children is a rapidly growing phenomenon in Iran. The communication challenges of adolescence with emphasis on social media in this study is a phenomenon that based on the changes and developments of adolescence, can affect the nature and quality of family relationships, question the parental authority, and cause changes in regulations. The present study explored the communication challenges of parents and adolescents with a focus on the use of the Internet and social media.

This qualitative study was performed using content analysis. The research population consisted of several parents with children (daughters) who were studying in the first secondary school in District 11 of Tehran in the academic year 2019-2020. The participants were 15 parents who were selected using purposive sampling and based on the theoretical saturation criterion. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and were then analyzed, codified, and categorized. Finally, after the extraction of the themes, the relevant and common themes were combined in the form of secondary and main categories.

Based on the content analysis of the data collected from the interviews, 4 main categories were identified: social media opportunities, social media coping strategies, social media problems from the parents’ point of view, and communication problems with the child.

In the modern world, parent-adolescent communication challenges are intermingled with the common challenges of using social media. However, it is impossible to ignore the effective and useful presence of social media in modern life. Acquiring knowledge, training conflict resolution skills, and recognizing the factors related to conflicts between parents and adolescents can help parents and pave the way for reducing parent-adolescent conflicts and improving the quality of parent-adolescent communication concerning social media use.