ADOLESCENTS’ ELECTRONIC DEVICE USE MANAGEMENT: EXPLORING PARENTS’ PERCEPTIONS, PERSPECTIVES, AND EXPERIENCES

There are pressures on parents to navigate the nuances of personalized electronic devices in the family system (Hiniker et al., 2016; Knitter & Zemp, 2020; Modecki et al., 2022; Nielsen et al., 2019). The study explored parents’ or guardians’ perceptions and perspectives of, and experiences navigating, personal electronic device use and management for adolescents from 14 to 19 years of age in their family home. Family systems theory acknowledges families are complex social systems where the actions of one family member may have an impact on the others, such as the impact of parent behaviours toward adolescents’ screentime (Bowen, 1966). Additionally, devices may be used to differentiate the self from the family system such as privately accessing a personal device to socialize and share ideas (Schnauber-Stockmann et al., 2021). Therefore, a basic qualitative interpretive design using family systems theory (Bowen, 1966) as a lens was employed to explore parents’ perceptions, perspectives, and experiences in managing their children’s personal electronic device use. This included examining whether and how parents monitored device use, the rules they implemented, and how they conceptualized devices (i.e., useful parenting tool or an invasive distraction). Using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022), three primary themes were generated from the participant interview data, interpreted through a family systems theory (Bowen, 1966) lens: (1) devices as a source of connection and disconnection in the family system; (2) navigating control, autonomy, and boundaries in the digital family system; and (3) parents making sense of the psychological, developmental, and systemic impacts of device use. These themes revealed four key findings including: (1) parents described personal electronic devices as having a dual role, simultaneously supporting and disrupting relational connections; (2) parents perceived adolescent device use as offering both potential benefits and harms; (3) parents indicated that device use management approaches, or digital parenting, must be actively negotiated and adapted to meet the evolving needs of their families; and (4) device use was understood to be embedded within broader family system dynamics, contributing to a digital family system (Bowen, 1966). The study concludes with a discussion on the practical implications of the results, strengths and limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Education (M.Ed.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School and Counselling Psychology

Grantor

University of Saskatchewan

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Bodner, Corinne

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Koole, Marguerite
• MacDowell, Paula
• McIntyre, Laureen

• Technology
• Digital Parenting
• Digital Family System
• Adolescent Device Use
• Family Device Management
• Parental Experiences

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10388/18798

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:harvest.usask.ca:10388/18798