How are young people connecting with their families through mobile communication?

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This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
Chapter Eighteen
“How are young people connecting with their families through mobile communication?”
By Sun Sun Lim1 & Yang Wang2
Introduction
In the past decade, mobile communication devices such as smartphones and tablet
computers have encroached so intensively into people’s daily routines that they have become
a veritable extension of the human body (Ling & Donner, 2013). In particular, these
personally-used, internet-enabled portable devices facilitate constant communication with
close intimates and distant acquaintances, thus enabling a lifestyle of ‘perpetual connectivity’
wherein the boundaries between absence and presence, near and far, and private and public
are blurred (Licoppe, 2004).
This blurring of boundaries takes on special significance within the household as
families come to grips with the new connectivities within and beyond the home, meshing as
they do with family lifestyles, routines, practices and value. While mobile communication
technology heralds new possibilities for real-time family connection and micro-coordination
of daily activities, this same technology can also introduce unforeseen risks and burdensome
expectations of constant availability, thus fomenting anxieties, tensions and conflicts between
family members, especially parents and children (Clark, 2012; Mascheroni, 2014). The ease
of accessibility and personally-owned nature of mobile technology devices is another issue,
as young people tap the enhanced affordances of mobile technology to carve out expanded
social networks, manage personal and peer identities, and strive for independence from
1 Sun Sun Lim, Singapore University of Technology and Design, sumlim@sutd.edu.sg
2 Yang Wang, National University of Singapore, wangyang01@u.nus.edu

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
parental controls (Green, 2003; Ling, 2000; Thulin & Vilhelmson, 2009). Parents in turn seek
to oversee their children’s mediated experiences, even to the extent of imposing rigorous time
restrictions, closely monitoring their daily mobile technology use, and even surreptitiously
reviewing the contents of their children’s devices (Clark, 2012; Lim & Soon, 2010;
Livingstone & Helsper, 2008). In such a context, tensions and misunderstandings are likely to
emerge as parents and children may disagree over the degree of autonomy youths can enjoy
in their mobile communication, as well as over the nature and extent of parental supervision.
This chapter will explain how young people, primarily adolescents, connect with their
families through mobile communication, and it will also delve into the complexity of parent-
child negotiations that may emerge as a result. Specifically, it will focus firstly on the use of
mobile technology by youths to communicate with their families, peers, and individuals
beyond their immediate milieus, as well as the multifarious roles these technologies play in
their everyday life. It will then look into parental concerns about their children’s vulnerability
to negative impacts from these mobile devises, and in turn, their proactive strategies of
supervising children’s technology use within the domestic sphere. Moreover, this chapter will
also discuss how youths and their parents negotiate tensions and conflicts that emerge in the
presence of mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs), so as to maximize
benefits of technologies on youth and nurture intimate family relationships.
Youths’ Communication Needs and Wants
Young people today are among the most avid and proficient users of mobile
communication, possessing their own mobile devices from an early age. Although still under
the care of their parents, young people are also eager to establish themselves as independent
individuals with their own peer networks. Personally-owned mobile technologies thus assume

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
particular significance for youths in that they allow them to stay in continuous contact with
their parents for daily coordination, while enabling them to carve out an autonomous space
to engage in independent socialization ( Clark, 2009, 2012; Devitt & Roker, 2009; Ling &
Yttri, 2002).
Bonding with Family
Young people’s interactions with their parents, whether borne out of compulsion or
intrinsic motivation, have been significantly influenced by the emergence of mobile
communication. With their facility for constant connectivity, parents were quick to recognize
the value of mobile phones in helping them monitor their children’s whereabouts in the
interest of safety (Devitt & Roker, 2009; Williams & Williams, 2005). Mobile
communication technologies thus serve as ‘metaphorical umbilical cords’ (Ling & Yttri, 2006,
p.226) between young people and their parents, cherished for the security they offer, but
villainized for inculcating dependency (Clark, 2012; Ling & Yttri, 2002, 2006).
Indeed, young people’s communication with parents over mobile devices focuses
largely on practical issues such as routinized reporting of whereabouts and coordination of
daily activities. In particular, adolescents tend to keep their parents informed about where
they are, when they will return home as well as who they are staying with, in order to ensure
their safety and relieve their parents of anxieties (Devitt & Roker, 2009; Ling & Yttri, 2006).
Mobile communication also enables real-time and spontaneous adjustments of plans and
activities between youths and their parents, such as rearrangement of transportation,
emergency notifications and seeking permission to stay out late (Ling & Yttri, 2002). For
example, if a teenager bumps into a friend after school, she can contact her parents
immediately with her smartphone, whether via phone call, text message or instant message

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
(IM) applications, to seek permission to ‘hang out’ with her friend and return home later than
usual.
While acknowledging the convenience of family coordination via mobile technology,
young people tend to regard such communication as tedious obligations. This is self-evident
in the fact that most of the time parents, as opposed to their children, are the ones who initiate
mediated conversations and speak more (Green, 2003; Ling & Yttri, 2006). Indeed, frequent
contacts from parents, especially when youths are socializing with peers, are viewed as
overbearing and intrusive, and will likely arouse annoyance and anger among adolescent
children in particular (Clark, 2012; Ling & Yttri, 2006).
Connecting with Peers
Besides connecting with families, mobile communication technology is more often
and more intensively used by youths to forge and sustain friendships with peers. In the
transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood, young people invariably gravitate
towards their peers and away from their parents and family ( Lim, 2016). Mobile
communication, which guarantees exclusive access and private conversations, is thus a boon
for youths who want to be accessible to peers but insulated from parental oversight (Clark,
2009, 2012; Ling & Yttri, 2002, 2006).
As with their communication with family via mobile devices, a significant proportion
of mediated exchanges between youths and their peers center around the coordination of
daily activities and the discussion of practical issues. Specifically, young people usually stay
in contact with each other on a daily or even hourly basis to discuss mundane topics such as
where they are, what they are doing, when and where to meet, and provide real-time help
when their peers get into trouble (Ling, 2000; Ling & Yttri, 2002). Another trait of mediated

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
communication within adolescent peer groups is the prevalence of ‘small talk’ that may take
the form of gossip, jokes and anecdotes (Ling & Yttri, 2002). In these conversations, what is
being said is less important than the reciprocity of communication itself. The mere fact that
they are chatting with large networks of friends affirms their sense of acceptance and
popularity within peer groups, widely perceived as a status symbol among youths of varying
ages (Green, 2003; Johnsen, 2003-).
However, the gratifications from peer relationships come with burdens, too. Young
people today have to remain available and responsive to contacts from their friends, anytime
and anywhere, in expectation of reciprocal acknowledgment and strengthening emotional
bonds, with a view towards reproducing their status within the virtual community. Sometimes
a mere delay in replying to a message can be regarded as indifference and strain relational
bonds, or tensions can easily escalate when a request for conversation is accidentally
overlooked (Johnsen, 2003).
Interacting with Strangers
Mobile communication technologies are also frequently used by youths to explore
diverse social contexts and interact with people beyond their immediate milieus. Connected
to the rest of the world via a panoply of ICT devices and online social networks, young
people today can meet and befriend strangers from all over the world without even stepping
out of their homes. This flexibility in social communication as well as the sense of
empowerment it brings is unprecedented.
In general, youths are inclined to interact with two types of strangers via mobile
devices. The first type consists of the ‘like-minded’ people who share common interests or
face similar pressures (Clark, 2012). For example, a teenager who is enthusiastic about game

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
design but fails to find like-minded acquaintances within his immediate social circle may
actively reach out to larger networks of people online who share his passion. The second type
comprises people whom youths serendipitously encounter in the mediated space. For example,
a young girl may trade views with strangers about parent-child relationships on a public
online discussion forum. Although young people are reported to spend increasing amounts of
time socializing with strangers online, prior research shows that they rarely seek to develop
these interactions into face-to-face friendships, but instead maintain stable and continuous
online communications with them (Livingstone & Bovill, 2001).
Parents cite contact with strangers as among the riskiest online behaviors, besides
other potential dangers such as cyberbullying, phone frauds, stalking and harassment (Devitt
& Roker, 2009; Huisman et al., 2012; Mascheroni, 2014). Hence, parents with such concerns
are motivated to closely supervise their children’s daily interactions with people outside of
their immediate social circles. In this regard, it is extremely challenging for parents to
supervise their children’s use of internet-enabled mobile communication devices given that
they are personally-owned and highly portable. Yet young people use these very devices to
extend their social networks beyond the realms that their parents would permit (Clark, 2012;
Mascheroni, 2014).
Value of Mobile Communication Technology for Young People
In light of the crucial roles mobile communication plays in the lives of young people,
we can discern three types of value this technology offers them: pragmatic, emancipatory,
and symbolic.
Pragmatic value. As the preceding discussion amply demonstrates, mobile
communication technologies serve as pragmatic tools for youths to seek help during

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
emergencies, and make real-time and nuanced coordination of daily activities with families
and peers ( Ling & Yttri, 2002). In particular, remaining available to parents and assuring
them of their safety is seen as a basic responsibility of a decent child ( Williams & Williams,
2005), whilst staying in constant connection with peers allow youths to become mature,
sociable and well-accepted by peers as they transition from childhood to adulthood (Clark,
2012; Green, 2003).
Emancipatory value. In providing constant connectivity and perpetual contact, mobile
communication paradoxically shackles young people to their parents, while enabling them to
acquire independence as well ( Green, 2003). Through personalized use of communication
technologies, young people can override their parents as gatekeepers, and experience the
world and establish broader social networks in their own capacity as individuals ( Green,
2003; Ling & Yttri, 2006). In this sense, mobile communication technologies embody and
grant young people leeway from omnipresent parental control into the more autonomous
sphere wherein they can make their own decisions.
Symbolic value. Mobile communication technologies are also rich with symbolic
meaning and become potent signifiers of personal identity and social status, especially
towards one’s peers (Ling & Yttri, 2002, 2006). Through choosing mobile devices of certain
brands and appearances, contacting certain groups of people, and using certain language
styles in mediated communication, young people can intentionally reshape their images to
cater to peer groups that they are in or hope to join, so as to gain acceptance and enhance
their standing within these groups (Clark, 2012; Green, 2003; Ling & Yttri, 2002, 2006). For
young people, mobile ICTs are therefore more than merely functional communication

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
technologies and are instead material and symbolic totems of autonomy, independence,
personal identity and growth.
Parental Interventions
When new technologies emerge, their impact on time-honored lifestyles, practices and
values are always viewed with trepidation, often triggering moral panics that are fueled by
adverse media coverage and alarmist social commentary. (Refer to Chapter 3 for more
information on moral panics about youth media.) The growing proliferation and use of
mobile communication technologies have similarly sparked parental concerns about their
potentially detrimental impacts on young people, especially in light of the highly
personalized and always-on communication these portable devices enable (Lim, 2016;
Mascheroni, 2014).
Motivated by these concerns, parents have been known to actively mediate their
children’s mobile communication technology use, often by imposing rules on usage and
content consumption. Some parents leverage these very technologies to monitor their
children’s whereabouts, activities and peer interactions.
Concerns and Anxieties
Parental concerns and anxieties usually focus on two general aspects, namely social
isolation caused by ICT addiction and the risks that young people may be exposed to via
ICTs.
As young people are spending increasing amounts of time on their mobile devices,
parents are likely to worry about their children’s preference for mediated interaction over
family interactions and other social activities. Parents have been known to blame mobile
technologies for taking their children’s time away from family life, and consequently,

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
reducing the quality of family relationships over time (Clark, 2012; Clark, Demont-Heinrich,
& Webber, 2005). Mobile devices are also reported to encroach on the time that young
people could better spend on more productive activities, such as schoolwork, household
chores, outdoor sports, social communication and so forth (Clark, 2012; Clark et al., 2005;
Shepherd, Arnold, & Gibbs, 2006). In this sense, while mobile communication technologies
can help youths to socialize with broader social circles and properly maintain various
relationships, they may finally end up physically isolating themselves in their bedrooms as
their time is monopolized by mediated interactions instead of face-to-face family
communication.
Besides the negative outcomes of addiction, parents also tend to keep watchful eyes
on potential risks that their children may be exposed to, either intentionally or inadvertently,
via mobile ICTs. In particular, parents have expressed strong concerns over the negative
influence of inappropriate content, especially those containing violent and pornographic
elements (Clark et al., 2005; Haddon, 2012; Mesch, 2006). Of even greater parental concern
is children’s mediated communication with strangers online, which is often mentioned in
relation to unforeseen threats to children’s safety, such as cyber-bullying, phone frauds,
disclosure of personal data to online predators and so on (Devitt & Roker, 2009; Haddon,
2012; Lim, 2016; Mesch, 2006). These anxieties are further exacerbated by the prevalence of
internet-enabled and personally-used portable mobile communication devices that do not lend
themselves easily to parental oversight.

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
Parental Mediation
In view of the potential risks and negative implications of mobile ICTs, parents seek
to assume active roles in mediating their children’s ICT use practices, so as to maximize
beneficial effects while mitigating undesirable impacts.
Parents are reported to employ a range of approaches to supervise and regulate their
children’s use of ICTs. Some parents rely heavily on restrictive rules to ensure that their
children use technological devices in appropriate manners and punishing them when these
rules are violated. In particular, parents tend to formulate a series of rules regarding
appropriate ICT use such as the time and duration for accessing ICTs, permitted locations for
use, as well as online activities that are encouraged or forbidden (Haddon, 2012; Lim & Soon,
2010; Mascheroni, 2014). Similarly, some parents also set regulations about the types of
information or websites that their children are not allowed to access beforehand and enforce
these regulations by tracking their online traces and checking messages on their phones
without their children’s knowledge (Clark et al., 2005; Devitt & Roker, 2009; Haddon, 2012).
Other parents prefer to exercise oversight and supervision when their children are
using communication technology. In this way, parents can have a better understanding of
their children’s preferences and lived experiences in the mediated world, identify potentially
problematic behaviors and develop improvised strategies of regulation. There are also parents
who undertake active mediation by engaging in interpretive and expressive communications
with their children during their screen time. Specifically, they usually encourage their
children to share their online experiences, while offering advice on the selection of content,
and discuss appropriate attitudes towards communication technology with a view towards
cultivating their children’s critical thinking about technologies and steering them away from

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
potentially risky people and communications (Haddon, 2012; Lim, 2016; Livingstone &
Helsper, 2008).
Parental mediation of children’s technology use is an ongoing and dynamic process
that involves intensive negotiation and emotional labor for both parents and children.
Different parents are likely to adopt different intervention approaches depending on their
parenting styles and the characteristics of their children, whilst the same parent may also
employ different strategies as the immediate context of children’s ICT consumption changes.
Parental Surveillance
While mobile communication technologies empower youths to cultivate a social life
beyond direct parental oversight, they also stretch the time-space boundary of parental
control in an unprecedented fashion, to the point that it can be regarded as
surveillance.Constantly connected to their children via mobile phones, these parents not only
require their children to provide regular updates on their safety and schedules, they also call
or send messages to them from time to time and interrogate in detail about their activities,
whereabouts and companions, regardless of their children’s availability (Devitt & Roker,
2009; Williams & Williams, 2005).
Some parents also look up their children’s phone logs, visiting online histories and
profiles on social network sites (SNS), usually without their children’s consent, to gain
insights into their social circles, activities beyond the home, as well as emotions and feelings
(Devitt & Roker, 2009; Lim & Soon, 2010; Mascheroni, 2014). For these parents, online
trails serve as a window to their children’s personal spaces that are otherwise private. Parents
sometimes also resort to surveillance software to track their children’s whereabouts and
monitor their mediated communications via ICTs (Clark, 2012; Haddon, 2012; Lim, 2016).

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
As a result, mobile communication technologies can be veritable surveillance tools for
parents to invade and gain control over their children’s personal life, breaching their privacy
and eroding the trust between them and their children ( Mascheroni, 2014; Williams &
Williams, 2005).
Challenges of Parental Mediation
The rapid evolution of mobile communication technologies and young people’s avid
embrace of the same have posed new challenges for parents to exercise effective mediation.
First, the growing portability of ICTs and personally-owned nature of mobile communication
devices allow young people to immerse themselves in online experiences in relative isolation,
thus undermining parents’ ability to implement direct mediation. Second, parents often lack
sufficient technological expertise to properly understand the mediated environment which
their children inhabit, let alone provide guidance for their children. They must constantly
keep pace with technological developments, acquire new knowledge and broaden the purview
of parental oversight. This often results in the erosion of parental authority over their children
and the compromise of parental influence on children’s socialization process (Clark, 2009,
2012; Mesch, 2006). Third, parents also face the dilemma of being uninvolved or
overinvolved in their daily supervision of children’s time with ICTs. On the one hand, in
view of youths’ vulnerability to potential risks related to ICT use, parents cannot grant their
children full freedom in experiencing the technology-mediated space without appropriate
parental oversight. On the other hand, however, parents also seek to avoid becoming the
overbearing parents who interfere too much in their children’s personal life via ICTs and
consequently create conflicts between them (Clark, 2012). In this context, parents usually
seek to strike a proper balance between these two extremes, although not always successfully.

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
Parent-Child Tensions Surrounding Mobile Communication Technology
Tensions and Negotiations
In many families, tensions between young people and their parents emerge due to
sharp differences in their respective perceptions and experiences of mobile communication
technologies, as well as divergences in the range and efficacy of parental mediation over
children’s consumption of these devices. While youths tend to fully applaud the rich
affordances of various technological devices, parents usually maintain an ambivalent attitude
wherein they appreciate the convenience brought by these technologies on the one hand, yet
also remain vigilant about their potentially negative effects on children’s well-being and
quality of family life on the other hand (Clark, 2009, 2012). Intergenerational divergences in
relation to mobile ICTs also reflect on distinct purposes and routines of using these devices
by youths and their parents. Specifically, for most parents, mobile devices are merely
meaningful as pragmatic tools for daily communication and coordination, while for young
people, they are indispensable parts of everyday life which not only serve practical purposes
but also of symbolic and expressive values (Clark, 2012; Ling & Yttri, 2002, 2006).
Sometimes these divergences can become blasting fuse of parent-child conflicts, especially
when mobile ICTs are intensively used by young people for ‘unproductive’ activities such as
gaming and chatting, instead of or ‘beneficial’ purposes such as learning and relationship
management (Clark, 2012; Mascheroni, 2014).
In this context, parents and children have to engage in constant negotiations about
these tensions, usually with a host of strategies and emotional exchanges, so as to better
incorporate various mobile ICTs into family life and explore appropriate ways of connecting
with each other in the presence of new technologies. Indeed, tensions often emerge between

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
parents and children over the extent of autonomy the latter can enjoy in using mobile devices,
and the appropriate rules and boundaries of parental control. In particular, the mediation
practices implemented by parents as an effort to protect their children from potential risks are
often interpreted as an invasion of privacy and an attempt to curtail freedom by young people,
and consequently give rise to discomfort, hostility and rebellion over time (Clark, 2012;
Mesch, 2006). In the face of strict parental control, a large proportion of youths develop
various tactics, either overtly or secretly, to elude and resist unwanted surveillance. Popular
evasive tactics include using mobile devices surreptitiously, outside the realm of parental
oversight, switching off or muting phones to deliberately ‘miss’ phone calls from parents,
blocking phone numbers of parents, deleting messages and online web histories (Clark, 2009,
2012; Devitt & Roker, 2009; Ling & Yttri, 2002, 2006; Mascheroni, 2014). In this ongoing
game of control and evasion, mobile technologies actually serve as the invisible yet fraught
battleground for residual parental authority and the growing adolescent autonomy.
Strategies for Parent-Child Connections
Intergenerational tensions derived from the adoption of mobile communication
technologies can erode parent-child relationships, and therefore require constant negotiation
in the domestic sphere.
For parents, the first step towards improved parent-child interactions is trying to
understand and navigate the mediated environment that their children inhabit, while
remaining open-minded to the children’s needs for mobile mediated communication and
other forms of online access (Clark, 2012; Lim, 2016). To this end, parents need to build a
relationship of trust with their children and purposefully create an expressive atmosphere at
home concerning the consumption of mobile communication technology. One parental

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
strategy is to initiate conversations about technology and engage in shared online activities,
such as watching videos and playing games on mobile devices (Clark, 2012; Lim & Soon,
2010; Shepherd et al., 2006). Through casual chats and shared activities, parents and children
can exchange their experiences in the mediated world and discuss appropriate values and
behavior, thereby helping to defuse parental concerns over negative impacts of mobile
communication technology on their children, while enhancing young people’s trust of and
closeness with their parents. Some parents also ask their children to teach them about new
functionalities of mobile technologies that they are less knowledgeable about (Clark, 2009,
2012; Correa, 2014; Kiesler, Zdaniuk, Lundmark, & Kraut, 2000). Instead of eroding parental
authority, this ‘bottom-up transmission’ (Correa, 2014) can actually become an opportunity
for parents and children to enjoy cozy family time together and achieve mutual understanding
in the process.
Children can also play their part. Above all, young people must put themselves in the
shoes of their parents, seek to understand parental concerns about the ever-changing mediated
environment, and at least to some degree, show respect for their seemingly overbearing
monitoring practices. In particular, they need to be mindful of the potential risks they may be
exposed to via mobile devices, and exercise self-regulation so as to evade malicious people
and inappropriate contents in their day-to-day use of these devices (Clark, 2012). They
should also seek to remain in regular contact with their parents to ensure them their safety
and facilitate basic coordination of family life with mobile communication technology, which
is increasingly regarded as a basic obligation of children in many contemporary families.

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
Conclusion
Mobile communication technology has firmly entrenched itself within many
households today, providing families with a variety of opportunities to remain connected with
each other for daily coordination and expressive interaction. In particular, the constant
connectivity bestowed by these technologies allows instrumental and emotional
communication between family members despite their physical separation, thus serving to
boost family cohesion and nurture intimacy. But for all of the blessings mobile
communication technology can bring to family life, they can also trigger tensions and
conflicts between parents and children. The negotiation between young people and their
parents surrounding mobile ICTs is never a one-off effort, but a dynamic and emotionally-
laden process that involves dialogue, persuasion, compromise, built on a relationship of
honesty and trust.

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
Discussion Questions
1. What roles do peers play in young people’s lives and how does mobile
communication support these roles?
2. Compared to older technologies such as the television or desktop computer, how do
mobile communication devices such as smartphones and laptops make parental
mediation more challenging?
3. How can parents seek to better inform themselves about young people’s media
consumption practices and needs?
4. Drawing on your own experience, do you feel if parental concerns about their
children’s mobile communication use reasonable or misplaced?
5. How can parent-child tensions of mobile communication use be alleviated?
Exercises
1. Draft a parent-child contract on the child’s use of mobile devices that you feel is
reasonable to both parties, and that takes into account the child’s needs and the
parent’s concerns.
2. Surf the internet for articles that offer parents advice on how to manage their
children’s use of mobile communication technologies. Critique the advice – is it
realistic and useful? How would you improve on it?

This is a submitted manuscript that has not yet undergone peer-review for
Lim, S. S., & Wang, Y. (2017). How are young people connecting with their families through
mobile communication? In N. A. Jennings & S. R. Mazzarella (Eds.), Twenty Questions about Youth
and Media. 2nd edition. New York: Peter Lang.
© Peter Lang, 2017
All rights reserved
References
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