Abstract:

Parenting in the digital age is fraught with emotions that stem from paradoxes and dilemmas, especially around children's’ use of smartphones (Livingstone & Byrne, 2018). On the one hand, parents may acknowledge the importance of technology and its necessity in daily life, and on the other hand, they face negative emotions regarding their children’s use (Anderson, 2019). Although the parents themselves may use the smartphone for their own needs, they tend to emotionally object to their children's use of the devices, thus, facing a duality of their emotional states.

Previous studies examined this phenomenon mainly in behavioral and cognitive aspects, mainly regarding issues such as parents' involvement, mediation, and attitudes towards their children's’ use of smartphones (e.g. Moreno et.al, 2019). This study investigated the phenomenon from the emotional aspect.

The research questions were:
(1) What are the differences between the emotions of parents toward their self-use of smartphones and their emotions toward their children’s use.
(2) Is there a correlation between the use of smartphones (by parents and by children) and the emotional reactions of parents towards them?

The research was conducted in a quantitative method, based on an online survey that was distributed in the snowball sampling technique. A hundred forty-nine respondents answered the survey, 25 male and 124 females, all parents of school-age children (6-18). Differences and correlations between main variables were analyzed by statistical means.

The study shows differences between the emotions that the use of smartphone evoked in parents regarding their personal use in contrast to their emotions towards their children's use. While in the context of personal use, the positive emotions are higher than the negative emotions, the opposite was found in their emotions towards their children's use. Namely, the positive emotions were lower than the negative emotions.

The study also showed that the emotions that parents felt towards smartphones correlated with the ways they used their device and the ways their children used it. While the use of smartphones for self-participation of parents in social networks was correlated to positive emotions, the same use by their children elicited negative emotions.

Keywords:

Smartphones, Parents, Emotions towards technologies.