College Students’ Perceptions of Communication Technology Use and Parent–Child Relationships
Abstract
Technologically-assisted communication plays a key role in facilitating relationships between parents and emerging adult college students who are living away from home. Informed by Media Multiplexity Theory, we investigated the channels that college students use to communicate with parents and the impact that used and non-used channels have on perceived parent–child relationships. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 44 undergraduate students in the United States. Students used diverse channels to connect with parents, although some channels were used exclusively with peers. Themes related to communication repertoire size (CRS) included communication frequency, content of communication, and parent gender emerged; themes related to communication gap size (CGS) included student-perceived technology gaps, privacy concerns, and generational differences. Students in high CRS dyads perceived that communication technologies increased or maintained parent–child relationship quality, whereas students in high CGS dyads reported that communication technologies worsened or did not impact parent–child relationships.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Not assessing whether the student was communicating with their mother, father, or another caregiver could have affected aspects of parent-student communication, including frequency and mode of contact and discussion of sensitive topics.
“we did not assess whether the student was communicating with their mother, father, or another caregiver which could have affected aspects of parent-student communication, including frequency and mode of contact (McCurdy et al., 2022) and the discussion of sensitive topics such as sex (Scull et al., 2022).”
From Daily Communication Between First-Year College Students and Their Parents: Associations With Perceived Relationship Positivity (2024) · cites this paper as McCurdy et al., 2022
Cites
The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades: Twitter and student engagement
Junco, R., Heiberger, G., & Loken, E. (2011) · Journal of Computer Assisted Learning · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00387.x · Cited by 1,535 · see citing works
Ahn, D., & Shin, D.-H. (2013) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.022 · Cited by 238 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Ideally, communication technologies should not replace face-to-face communication but instead enable individuals to extend and maintain social relations (Ahn & Shin, 2013).”
BackgroundResultCollege students' cell phone use and attachment to parents and peers
Lepp, A., Li, J., & Barkley, J. E. (2016) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2016.07.021 · Cited by 77 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Lepp et al. (2016) reported that cell phone use with parents—assessed as daily calls and texts made/received and amount of time spent using cell phones—predicted more positive quality of communication with parents for female college students.”
Background
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Duckworth, J. C., Bumpus, M., Forsythe, K. M., Cooper, B. R., & Hill, L. G. (2024) · Emerging Adulthood · doi:10.1177/21676968241273308 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
- Authors
- McCurdy, A. L., Benito-Gomez, M., Lee, G. Y., & Fletcher, A. C.
- Affiliations
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- The University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
- Corresponding author
- McCurdy, Amy L.
- Venue
- Emerging Adulthood
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2022-03-04
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1118-1131
- ISSN
- 2167-6968 (ISSN-L)
- 2167-6984
- OpenAlex
- W4220957846
- Cited by
- 9
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1
- FWCI
- 2.16
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Emerging Adulthood (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
- Keywords
- parent-child relationship, university students, communication technology use, living away from home, generational differences, privacy concerns, technology gap, relationship quality
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
