kyle - undergraduate thesis - exploring facebook’s relationship to parental attachment
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EXPLORING FACEBOOKS RELATIONSHIP TO PARENTAL ATTACHMENT,INDEPENDENCE, AND ACADEMIC ADJUSTMENT OF COLLEGE STUDENTS
A Capstone Experience Manuscript
Presented by
Kyle William Lunt
Completion Date:
May 2012
Approved By:
Michael Morgan, Communication
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ABSTRACT
Title: Exploring Facebooks Relationship to Parental Attachment, Independence, and
Academic Adjustment of College StudentsAuthor: Kyle Lunt, Communication
CE Type: Course Capstone ThesisApproved By: Michael Morgan, Communication
In a culture of ever-emerging social media technologies, our interpersonal interactions with those
around us are in a constant state of change. It is important to monitor that change in order toanalyze and understand its societal and cultural implications. This study seeks to investigate how
the use of Facebook relates to a number of critical variables important to the parent-college
student relationship. Existing research has explored how and by whom Facebook is used, while
other studies have looked at attachment and independence in relation to collegiate adjustment;however, there remains a gap in the research, in that these variables have not been previously
connected to Facebook use. This study investigates the potential role Facebook plays in
supporting one end of a two-tailed hypothesis: that student-parent Facebook use correlateswith healthy attachment, the promotion of individuation, and subsequently adjustment and
success, OR that it correlates negatively with attachment, leading to increased dependence,
suppressed individuation, and subsequently undermining adjustment. Independence, parental
attachment, and ability to adjust to the collegiate academic environment are all important factorsthat can impact the future success of students. Findings suggest that student-parent Facebook
communication correlates with attachment levels of parents and students of the same gender, and
for females, is also linked to independence, proposing that Facebook may play a supporting rolein completing a modified version of the first tail of the two-tailed hypothesis. While Facebook
use adds to total parental communication, it does not appear to play a superior role to other
media forms.
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ABSTRACT
Title: Exploring Facebooks Relationship to Parental Attachment, Independence, and
Academic Adjustment of College StudentsAuthor: Kyle Lunt, Communication
CE Type: Course Capstone ThesisApproved By: Michael Morgan, Communication
In a culture of ever-emerging social media technologies, our interpersonal interactions with those
around us are in a constant state of change. It is important to monitor that change in order toanalyze and understand its societal and cultural implications. This study seeks to investigate how
the use of Facebook relates to a number of critical variables important to the parent-college
student relationship. Existing research has explored how and by whom Facebook is used, while
other studies have looked at attachment and independence in relation to collegiate adjustment;however, there remains a gap in the research, in that these variables have not been previously
connected to Facebook use. This study investigates the potential role Facebook plays in
supporting one end of a two-tailed hypothesis: that student-parent Facebook use correlateswith healthy attachment, the promotion of individuation, and subsequently adjustment and
success, OR that it correlates negatively with attachment, leading to increased dependence,
suppressed individuation, and subsequently undermining adjustment. Independence, parental
attachment, and ability to adjust to the collegiate academic environment are all important factorsthat can impact the future success of students. Findings suggest that student-parent Facebook
communication correlates with attachment levels of parents and students of the same gender, and
for females, is also linked to independence, proposing that Facebook may play a supporting rolein completing a modified version of the first tail of the two-tailed hypothesis. While Facebook
use adds to total parental communication, it does not appear to play a superior role to other
media forms.
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INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM & THOERETICAL FRAMEWORK:
Significance of Study:
In a culture of ever-emerging social media technologies such as Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube, etc., our interpersonal interactions with those around us, including family, friends,
acquaintances, and the rest of the public sphere, are in a constant state of change. It is important
to monitor that change in order to analyze and understand its societal and cultural implications.
In addition to tracking how Facebook usage has evolved in recent years with respect to students
and parents, especially as Facebook continues to spread to older generations, the major goal of
this study is to investigate how the use of the most pervasive form of social media in our culture
relates to a number of critical variables important to the parent-college student relationship,
including parental attachment, overall independence (Individuation), and adjustment to college.
Thus the subjects of this study are college students.
Over time, the cultural norms surrounding college have shifted. For example, in previous
generations, many more students didnt graduate high school and many more high school
graduates didnt go on to study at a college or university before heading straight into the work
force, while today it is the expectation of many more students who graduate high school to
continue their education in college by whatever means necessary. In addition, when parents
shipped their children off to college in the past, it was generally more of a parting in terms of
communication than it is today due to the fact that we are increasingly immersed in a culture of
split-second communication technologies. Cell phones, email, instant messaging, social
networking, an ever-increasing prevalence of internet connectivity, and even smartphones which
connect all of these into one device, have increased the frequency and ease by which we stay in
contact with people in our lives. The longer we live with these technologies, the more
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normalized and universal they become, even among older generations. In fact, it is one of the
hypotheses of this study that a higher percentage ofcollege students parents will have Facebook
accounts than what empirical evidence showed just a few years ago when data collected from
UMass Amherst college students showed that 30% of students had a parent with a Facebook
account (Connolly, 2009, p. 21). It is easier now more than ever to maintain constant
communication with family and friends we arent able to spend time with in person due to
physical distance and other limitations. This understandably affects the patterns of interaction
between college students and their parentsperhaps in terms of quality, but at least in terms of
frequency. If a student living away at college wrote a letter or called his or her parents once
every few weeks by payphone or landline even a decade or two ago, that would likely be his or
her only contact with them. However, today students and parents have the ability to keep up
much more regularly.
Therefore, if new information communication technologies such as Facebook have the
ability to alter our practices of interaction and both enable and constrain social action and social
relationships (Kling, Rosenbaum, & Sawyer, 2005, p. 20), then some important questions we
are inclined to ask while focusing this notion on the parent-college student relationship, are:
What connections can be drawn between Facebook use and parental attachment? What about
Facebook use and student independence? Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, what
connections can be drawn between Facebook use and academic and social adjustment? With this
information we are also able to draw general connections between college students parental
attachment and independence levels, subsequently analyzing how and if these potential
relationships correspond to academic and social adjustment (first without Facebook in the
equation). Then, the analysis will explore whether or not the overall use of Facebook by college
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students, or the amount they use it to interact with their parents, plays a significant role or
appears to cause certain trends in the data that represent these connections. It is plausible that
Facebook is no different than other ICTs in this regard; that greater Facebook communication
may create the same effects among these key variables that other forms of communication like
texting or emailing do. What is unique about Facebook, however, is that unlike these other
technologies, communication is done in the public eye (or at least in the eyes of everyone who
can view ones Facebook profile). There is also the capability for trans-relationship
communication. For example, a parent is able to view, comment, and even take part in the
conversations that a student is already having, or has had in the past (since Facebook
conversations arent archived or deleted like in other messaging technologies) wi th other
Facebook friends, creating complex communication-relationship dynamics in any given
exchange. Conversely, in-person conversation, telephone calls, texting, video chat, and email are
all typically forms of private, one-on-one, communication. And unlike any of these other
technologies, Facebook combines emails ability to conveniently send and receive messages at
any time, instant messagings ability to create instant, shorter conversation back and forth,
textings ability to do so on-the-go (via virtually any mobile device with internet access), and
other social networking sites abilities to share pictures, videos, and personal information about
oneself.
While it is not possible with cross-sectional data to determine the direct level of causality
when it comes to Facebooks impact on academic and social adjustment, parental attachment, or
independence, relationships that are found bear significance of their own. For instance, these data
may not prove that greater Facebook communication with a parent specifically leads to a higher
level of attachment to that parent, or whether students who communicate heavily with their
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parents via Facebook do so because of preexisting attachmentthe direction in this case is
indeterminablehowever, based on the relationship we are able to draw important conclusions
and interpretations of our own. Within the social-scientific theoretical framework ofthe media-
society interaction model (p. 600) discussed by Elkind which asserts that media both reflect
and determine society, we can reason that the relationship, rather than causality is what is most
significant. From this perspective, causality inherently goes in both directions because of media
and societys dynamic relationship, and thus a strong positive correlation between Facebook use
and healthy independence, for example, could mean that Facebook both contributes to and is a
result of student independence.
This study is pertinent because social media is still a relatively new, and still growing,
phenomenon in our culture. One of the fundamentally unique aspects of being human is our
unprecedented ability to communicate amongst each other; the more we understand the effects
and relationships caused by ICTs, the more we can understand ourselves and our culture. A more
solid understanding of our cultures relationship to Facebook will provide a stronger base of
preparedness and knowledge to adapt to future innovations in the growing realm of social media.
Existing research discusses how and by whom Facebook is used, and even how college students
feel about their parents using Facebook (Stern & Taylor, 2007; Connolly, 2009). In addition,
other studies have looked at attachment and independence in relation to collegiate adjustment
(Mattanah, Hancock, & Brand, 2004); however, there remains a gap in the research in that these
variables have not been connected to Facebook use. So, as a rational next step, it is interesting to
investigate how this increasingly popular form of communication relates to things our society
values in the growth and development of college studentsour societys future. Independence,
parental attachment, and ability to adjust to the collegiate academic and social environments are
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all vital pieces of that puzzle and can impact the future success of students. This study
illuminates the potential role Facebook plays in this process.
Overview of Previous Research & Introduction of Hypothesis:
Secure attachment to parents has been shown to have a positive correlation with
independence (less anxiety about the separation process) which correlates to better adjustment to
college (Mattanah et al., 2004). Interacting more frequently with parents on Facebook, or simply
having them as a Facebook friend, might indicate either healthy attachment ordependence.
This opens the door for an intriguing two-tailed hypothesis: Could college student Facebook
use with parents correlate with healthy attachment, the promotion of individuation, and
subsequently adjustment and success? Or does it correlate negatively with healthy attachment,
leading to increased dependence, suppressed individuation, and subsequently undermining
adjustment and success?
Results from this study such as a possible correlation between Facebook use and lack of
independence may potentially be used as a springboard for further research, such as on whether
the communication patterns developed and engendered by the salience of social media play any
sort ofrole in the phenomenon of the boomerang generation of young adults who graduate
college and come back home to seek further support and nurturing from their parents
(Andreason, 2001, p. 11), which is commonly ascribed to socio-economic dimensions within
society. Results from this research could also potentially be applied to add to the discussion of
various social theories such as Demos (1994) notion that society forms the family more than a
good family creates a good societyfamily is influenced from without. Or it could be used as an
interesting jumping-off point in juxtaposition to Williams (2011) idea of having the family all in
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the same room but not together because of all the different screens (and thus different worlds).
If data from this study indicate a strong correlation between parent-student interaction via
Facebook and parental attachment, an ironic, yet stable argument can be made that while ICTs
can cause families to be in the same room yet not interacting with each other, they can also
conversely lead to family closeness even when family members are very far away. In the same
way that the daughter in the Williams article can show her mom something interesting on her
screen that creates a bonding moment, if her daughter is away at college, she could just as
easily post a link on her Moms Facebook wall.
Using a combination of original questions and questions derived from previous
questionnaires, this study measured college students demographics, parental attachment to both
mother and father, independence, both social and academic college adjustment, general
communication practices by frequency and type, and in particular, Facebook usage including:
overall student usage, existence of parent accounts, friendship status with parents, and
frequency of student-parent Facebook interaction. It is with measurements derived from this last
set of variables that this study attempts to find correlations between parental attachment,
independence, and academic and social adjustment in college in relation to Facebook use.
LITERATURE REVIEW:
Facebook Literature:
The initial possibility of research questions for this study amounted to an embarrassment
of riches. Through reviewing existing literature to find a viable yet interesting research gap, and
after multiple iterations and revisions, the topic of discussion was able to be simplified and
broken down to a manageable form. The following is a literature review highlighting and
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assessing relevant knowledge on the research topic and from which a direction of this study
emerged.
An article, Social Networking on Facebook, by Stern and Taylor (2007) looked at how
college students use Facebook. An impressive statistic showed that from a survey of 364
undergraduates of a mid-western university, 88% of them had Facebook accounts. 62% allowed
everyone in their university to access their profiles while only a small percentage of students
reported limiting their profiles for privacy reasons. In addition, most students reported giving
accurate representations of themselves on the site. Time spent on Facebook was limited in terms
of what we think of today, with almost half (49%) spending only 10 minutes per day on the site
and only 3% reporting that they spent more than two hours per day on Facebook. It is possible
that this low percentage is due to the fact that Facebook use has become more prevalent and
frequent since 2007, but social desirability may have played a more significant role four or five
years ago when Facebook was less normalized as a routine activity. Five years ago when
Facebook was newer, high daily usage may have been seen as not having a real social life
whereas today it is accepted as more of an intricate and necessary aspect of having one.
The researchers also found that the most common uses of Facebook were for sending
messages to friends and viewing photoskeeping in touch with old friends, making plans,
checking out people, checking up on their current boyfriend/girlfriend, entertainment and
procrastination (Stern & Taylor, p. 13). Data for these findings were collected though a closed-
ended set of questions with an option to add other uses that werent listed. This shows how
Facebook can play a crucial role in communication among peers which can act as a good
theoretical counterpoint for interaction with parents (with all the obvious caveats). The study also
found that only 17% of people never accepted friend requests from people they didnt know,
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demonstrating that students are willing and open to share information about themselves with
strangers. Many reported accepting friend requests simply so as to not appear rude or mean.
In the studys determination of Facebook conflict it was shown that 20% of users reported ever
being stalked on Facebookand 86% reported that they had ever been in any trouble because of
Facebook. The connotation of stalked was assumed to be negative in this study and trouble
was left up to the surveyed to define.
The authors describe Facebooks role in promoting relationship maintenance as well. In
this sense it allows people to stay in touch and establish or at least maintain positive relationships
with others. One critique of the study is that it does not raise the question of to what level these
interactions and friendships are superficial. This study also describes Facebooks ability to
provide a way to express ones personality and rapidly communicate with many users
simultaneously without having to type out multiple email addresses, for example (p. 18).
One major consideration in evaluating the Stern and Taylor study in comparison to the
one at hand is that the data were collected between February and September 2006. Like all social
research, it is limited to the time and place it was conducted, creating an incentive for this new
study to see what is going on now and evaluate the significant changes. At the time of the
previous study, Facebook was not open to everyone. It was already available to college students
and became open to High School students in March 2006, but was not open to the general public
until after the window of this study. Therefore, parent data were not included in any form. Since
then, privacy settings have also been vastly expanded upon, revamped, and simplified. The
emergence of the iPhone and other smart phones did not occur until 2007 which means Facebook
applications for mobile use also are not part of the equation in this study. Since the time of this
study Facebook has opened up to anyone including many corporations. Advertising has risen and
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become more advanced, and due to this, the analysis of negative Facebook experiences might
look a lot different than it did before, including many more complaints about unwanted
invitations and spam regarding groups and events.
A study done by Eszter Hargittai (2008) which included a survey of 1,060 18-19 year old
college students in Illinois legitimized Facebook as the most popular social networking site
(SNS) at 78.8% usage compared to MySpace which was second at 54.5%. The study also
indicated that students whose parents had higher education levels were more likely to use
Facebook over other sites such as MySpace and that students who lived at home rather than away
at school were less likely to use social networking sites. Hispanics were the most likely to use
MySpace. Since people often use SNS to maintain existing relationships, they tend to use the
same SNS that the people they know already use.
A 2009 study by Corrine Connolly entitled Families on Facebook: Friend or Foe? was
designed to explore parent/child interactions and communication patterns on Facebook
(Connolly, 2009). A 44 question, ten minute survey was distributed to three general education
classes comprised of 203 respondents at UMass Amherst. One limitation to this study was that it
asked the students, rather than parents themselves, about how frequent the parents Facebook use
was. The question asks, How often does that parent (the one who uses it the most) use
Facebook? The problem this question poses is that students might not be the most accurate
judge of what parents are doing on Facebook all the timeespecially college students who spend
less time with their parents directly and tend to live apart from them. There are many times
where I personally go on Facebook to check on other people or see if anything exciting has
happened and dont post anything. College students in the study may be unaware of how
frequently their parents use Facebook or log on because they can only see the visible activity.
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There is likely no way for the student to know how much the parent actually logs on. Using
Facebook could be different than logging in to Facebook in many cases as well. One must
also consider, however, that during the time of this study it was relatively new for parents to get
on Facebook at all, so the author may have suspected students would know more about their
parents usage based on their general relationships and discussions. The study also measured the
number of Facebook friends students have, how often the parent/student uses Facebook, and
whether or not the student had a parent on Facebook. It found that 30% of the sample did in fact
have a parent on Facebook.
My main critique of this study is that the author continually states findings of students
who are unhappy about their parents being on Facebook. She finds that unhappiness about
parents being on Facebook is correlated to blocking parents more online and communicating less
with parents in general. However, there is no question in the survey directly asking about a
students unhappiness with their parent on Facebook. There is only a question asking how
strongly they agree or disagree (1-5) with the statement Im happy to have my parent(s) on
Facebook (p. 23). Connolly then uses the reverse of this answer to measure each students
Unhappiness, which data, although it has a possibility of usefulness, could also be
fundamentally flawed in this context because lack of happiness about having a parent on
Facebook isnt necessarily tantamount with being unhappy about it. Presumably, many who
strongly disagree with the statement (which was only 20%) are unhappy about it, but some
may also be simply indifferent. For instance, am I happy that Pluto is no longer a planet? No. But
am I unhappy about it? Not really. Indifference might play villain to these results but its hard to
say. Either way, if Connolly wanted to measure student unhappiness she might have been better
off asking about it directly. This could account for why there is a high percentage of students in
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her study who are not happy about their parents Facebookpresence, but who are not willing to
delete their own Facebook page over it or ask their parent to delete theirsalthough those would
be fairly extreme responses.
There could be a certain 3rd
person effect in the wording of the questions. This might
explain why 41% said it was embarrassing to be friends with a parent, and 63% said it was
weird to have a parent on Facebook, while only 13% said having a parent on Facebook makes
them look strange. Why would people be embarrassed about it if it didnt cause them to be
perceived differently or seen as strange? Connolly acknowledges that maybe uncool would be
a better term than strange. It can be mustered that a very low percentage of the 63% who think
its weird to have a parent on Facebook are the students who are actually Facebook friends with
their parents. Varied statistics may be a result in large part of the specific wording of the
questions. It is weird to have my parent(s) on Facebook allows the question to be read less
personally, as though it is weird for other people, or it is weird in general. But Having a parent
on Facebook makes me look strange to other users is directed more specifically toward the
answerer, possibly triggering a natural reaction of self-defense. No one wants to feel like
something makes them look strange. Students are more likely to say something is weird if the
question doesnt imply they are talking about themselves.
The study also found that there is no correlation between how many Facebook friends a
student had and whether they were Facebook friends with their parents. Another thing the study
measured was how frequently Facebook was used between parents and students compared to
calling and emailing which are more traditional. There were questions on how often students
called parents, how often parents called students, and how often students emailed parents, but
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curiously no question on how often parents emailed students. It seemed odd to include 3 out of
the 4 questions.
This study also provides a good benchmark to examine how much Facebook interaction
between parents and students has increased. Only three years ago during this study, 30% of
students had parents as Facebook friends. It is reasonable to suspect that this number has gone up
significantly. In addition, in 2009, Facebookdidnt compare to phone and email as primary
forms of parent/student interaction. 78% of students spoke with parents on the phone at least a
few times a week, 39% emailed, and only 5-6% interacted with parents on Facebook at least a
few times a week. This study found that when parents do actually use Facebook, it becomes a
replacement for the other forms of traditional communication. Initially, I had expected to find
this result to have proliferated over time. Pre-data analysis, I also expected my study to
determine that Facebook usage in 2012 would rival phone use by percentage, while possibly
even surpassing email; however I still expected the phone to be the most common form of
communication (which has been re-confirmed). I also suspected that Facebook inboxing had
potentially replaced a large portion of emailing and expected to find that general Facebook
interaction between parents and children has gone up significantly, leading to a slight decline in
cell phone and email communicationthe old leaders.
A 2009 study from the London School of Economics (West, Lewis, & Currie, 2009) was
one of the few that had examined the idea of parents as possible Facebook friends. The study was
done through a series of semi-structured interviews with 16 students in 2007 with a mean age of
22, lasting about an hour each, gathering their thoughts on having a parent as a Facebook friend.
Only undergraduates known to be active Facebook users were approached (p. 619). Still, at this
time, the prevalence of parents on Facebook was quite low with only one female in the group
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reporting that her mother was her Facebook friend, but the thought had at least made its way into
the minds of many of these college-age users. There was an overall notion that parents would not
be welcomed due to underlying reasons of social norms, embarrassment, and worries about
mothers. Several thought it unlikely that their parents would even use Facebook, so the prospect
of their wanting to be friendswould not arise: Well,she doesnt know how to use the Internet
so I know that wont happen! (Charlotte).More generally, Theres that idea that you want to
keep certain things away from your parents (Luke) (p. 621). There was an overall notion in the
interviews that ones public personality somehow excluded the family as part of the public,
making the importance of separate worlds fundamental. However, the issue of normalization
of ICTs over time that I previously described already comes into play in these interviews from
2007. This is displayed most vividly in one of the participants responses:
Im not embarrassed that my mums on Facebook anymore because there seem to be a
lot more parents, oldies on Facebook. But at first it was just my mum, and I was pretty
embarrassed by that . . . I just knew that it was something I didnt want my mum
involved in, she could look at my photos, and that sort of stuff but I didnt want her
actively partaking in it. Just because thats not what mums do. (Hannah) (p. 621).
An interesting aspect of these interviewees was that their private life was something that was
seen as outside their family rather than inside it. Fahey (1995) has proposed that instead of one
public/private boundary, it may be more accurate to speak of a more complex re-structuring in a
series of zones ofprivacy (p. 688).
Venezuela, Park, and Kee (2009) looked at Facebook and enhancement of social capital
among college students by using data from a web survey taken by college students in Texas.
Although positive relationships[were found] between [amount] of Facebook use and students'
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life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement, and political participation, these relationships
were not determined to be very strong and thus Facebook was not deemed a significant catalyst
for creating civic duty and democracy among American youth. The study also concludes that the
typical moral panic behind the idea that Facebook is harmful to young Americans can be
eased.
College Student Attachment, Independence, and Adjustment Literature:
According to past research (Strage & Brandt, 1999), the number of students enrolling in
U.S. colleges and universities is at an unprecedented high, with new students reporting increased
confidence that they will successfully graduate. In spite of this confidence, once at college,
students are reporting record high levels of emotional and psychological stress (Sax, Astin, Korn,
& Mahoney, 1999; U.S. Department of Education, 1995). During the 1970s and 1980s, research
demonstrated that students with higher levels of separation-individuation (coded as healthy
independence in my study) reported better academic and social adjustment to college and fewer
symptoms of loneliness or depression (Hoffman, 1984; Hoffman & Weiss, 1987; Lapsley, Rice,
& Shadid, 1989; Levine, Green, & Millon, 1986; Lopez, Campbell, & Watkins, 1986, 1988;
Rice, Cole, & Lapsley, 1990). In these studies, separation-individuation was defined primarily
as the absence of negative feelings about the process of separation, including feelings of anxiety,
guilt, or expecting rejection when separating. Separation-individuation is seen as a
developmental process that begins with separation from parents, peers, and other significant
persons, but that extends to individuation and the development of a coherent, autonomous self
(Mattanah et al., 2004).
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The Mattanah study about the parental attachment of college students in relation to their
separation-individuation also examined three dimensions of adjustment in collegeacademic,
social, and personal-emotionalto explore whether attachment and separation-individuation
were equally relevant across these areas of adjustment for male and female college students
(Mattanah et al., 2004). 404 college students (158 [39.1%] men and 246 [60.9%] women) at a
middle-sized public regional university in the Northeastern United States participated in what
was described to them as a study of college student adjustment. Data collection took place over
a 3-year period and throughout the school year, from early in the fall semester to late in the
spring semester. It is my understanding that the students were not followed over time, but the
unusually long three year period was simply to gather more participants (it was a 90 minute
survey after all). Participants were recruited via flyers placed around campus and through
announcements made in undergraduate courses. Most of these announcements were made in
undergraduate psychology courses, but an effort was made to recruit students in other
departments as well (e.g., English, History, and Mass Communications). Interested students were
individually administered a packet of questionnaires to complete, which took about 90 minutes.
Upon completion, participants received a form that might be applicable for extra credit in their
courses and their name was entered into a raffle for a small gift certificate at the local bookstore.
To maintain confidentiality, participants signed a separate informed consent form but did not put
any identifying information on the questionnaires. An unusually long 90 minute survey and a gift
incentive allowed for a very comprehensive studysomething that was not a viable option, nor
deemed necessary, in the development of my own survey.
Of the 404 students, the mean age of the participants was 20.57 years. Using
Hollingshead's (1965) two-factor index of social class, 43.7% of the students were from families
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in Social Classes I and II (i.e., executives, major professionals, and large business owners),
whereas 56.3% were from families in Social Classes III and IV (minor professionals, middle
management, small business owners, skilled workers, etc.; Mattanah et al., 2004). For my survey
I chose to drop the complicated social class measurements due to the format of the scan-tron
answer sheet. Instead the response options range from Working Class to Upper Class.
Overall, I was impressed with the thoroughness of this study. It took place over a 3 year
period (in which students were not followed), had a 90 minute survey, which is tough to get
students to take the time for, and many demographics were taken into account including race,
gender, age, and even social class.
Mattanah et al. gave the students in the study a survey comprised of three different
instruments that had already established credibility within the scholarly community. One, the
Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987), measured student
attachment levels to parents and peers with 25 questions. The second, the Separation-
Individuation Test of Adolescence (Levine, Green & Millon, 1986), contains 103 items that
students responded to on a 5-point rating scale, measuring their level of separation-individuation.
The third, the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (Baker & Siryk, 1989), is a 67-item
self-report questionnaire used to assess college students' academic, social, and personal-
emotional adjustment to college, all of which have been shown to correlate negatively with
college attrition and positively with student grade point average and participation in social
events. By combining the results of the three different test batteries, Mattanah et al. were able to
determine correlations among attachment, individuation, and successful adaptation to college.
The study supported a growing body of evidence suggesting that both a secure
attachment relationship to parents and a healthy level of separation-individuation are predictive
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of positive academic, social, and personal-emotional adjustment to college. A simplified version
of these findings is illustrated in Figure 1. These results might be counter-intuitive to those who
think that attachment to parents during college leads to an inability of students to live on their
ownalmost as if the parents acted as a crutch and when you remove the crutch, the student
would fall flat. The key factor in defeating this notion is to recognize that healthy attachment
does not imply dependence; they are in fact separate variables. Instead, attachment with parents
seems to reinforce factors that improve a students ability to become a successful, more
independent individual at college (the positive correlations suggest that the relationships work in
the other direction as well).
Figure 1: Mattanah et al. Model, 2004
There are many studies on parent-child attachment/separation. Mattanah and others
extend these theories to apply them to college adaptation. The current study extends the subject
even further to see how a social media site like Facebook might fit into the equation since most
college students now use Facebook regularly. Based on the findings of Mattanah and the other
Separation-
individuation
AdjustmentDimensions
Attachment
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studies, evidence suggests that healthy, attached relationships correlate to higher separation-
individuation (healthy independence), because good relationships with parents help students to
be less susceptible to anxiety, guilt, or rejection, which are all defined as negative feelings about
the process of separation when students go to college. Greater attachment to mothers and
fathers leads to less anxiety about the separation process, and less anxiety about separation leads
to greater academic, social, and personal-emotional adjustment to college (Mattanah et al.,
2004, p. 221). Therefore, the study presented here pursued a connection between those findings
and Facebook use. Greater Facebook use with parents might mean either healthy attachment or
greater dependency and therefore, use of Facebook with parents might transitively either hinder
or enhance college students healthy independence, thus impacting academic and social
adjustment at college. The model shown in Figure 2 illustrates the initial hypothesis tested in this
study.
Figure 2: Hypothesized Model
Communication
w/ Parents on FB
Independence
Academic &
Social
Adjustment
Attachment
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This model assumes that the pre-existing relationships among parental attachment,
independence, and the social and academic dimensions of adjustment established in the Mattanah
et al. (2004) study hold true. Furthermore, it hypothesizes that Facebook usage with parents also
positively correlates with both parental attachment and independence, offering another
dimension to these relationships. A confirmation of this model suggests that student-parent
Facebook communication, due to the proposed unique nature and communication patterns of the
site, somehow plays an influential role in the status of students independence and/or attachment
to their mothers and fathers, therefore relating to levels of academic and social adjustment at
college.
METHODOLOGY:
Survey Description:
This study is based on a multi-part, 45 question survey administered to college
undergraduates. The survey was broken down into six basic sections: demographics, attachment
to mother and father, independence, academic and social adjustment, communication patterns
with parents, and Facebook related questions.
There were five demographic questions in the first section, which gathered information
on gender, year in school, the college/school the students major falls under, socio-economic
class, and race. These items were used as introductory data to gauge to general demographic
qualities of the group and to allow for the possibility of any of these factors, the most useful
being gender, to act as controls for major variable correlations.
Questions six through thirteen in next section measured academic and social adjustment
to college. Eight questions from the original 67 of the Student Adaptation to College
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Questionnaire or SACQ (Baker et al., 1989) were chosen (and in some cases wording was
slightly adjusted for clarity). Due to issues of survey length, only a select few questions were
taken. The same applies for the Attachment and Adjustment sections of the survey. For ease and
consistency, the original nine-point scale was changed to a Likert-Type scale ranging from 1-
Strongly Disagree to 5-Strongly Agree with no labels under responses 2 through 4. Five of
the eight questions measure academic adjustment: two regarding motivation (e.g., I have well-
defined academic goals), two regarding application (e.g., I skip a lot of classes), and one
regarding performance (e.g., I struggle academically, considering the work I put in). The
remaining three questions of the section focus on the social aspect of adjustment: one each
regarding nostalgia (e.g., I often wish I were home instead of college), general (e.g., Im
satisfied with my social life at college), and environment (e.g., I am pleased about my decision
to come to UMass). Indices were created from this section to measure Academic Adjustment,
Social Adjustment, and also combined to measure Overall College Adjustment. Since we are
dealing with college students, these are the studys most significant dependent variables.
Questions 14 through 23 make up the third section and measure student attachment to
both mother and father. Of the 75 questions from the original Inventory of Parent and Peer
Attachment Survey or IPPA (Armsden et al., 1987), the 25 measuring peer attachment were
dropped. Of the 25 questions for each of the mother and the father, five were chosen: two
regarding communication, two regarding trust, and one alienation which was reverse-
scored. The questions chosen from the original survey were selected because they were deemed
most relevant to the study at hand. Ten questions were split into five each about the mother and
father. The questions for both the mother and father are identical. Response categories for these
ten questions range from Almost Never or Never True to Almost Always or always true. The
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idea was taken into consideration of changing the response categories to match the Independence
and Adjustment sections which use the response categories from Strongly Agree to Strongly
Disagree because of suggestions for consistency, however, upon deliberation, the responses
were kept as-is for this sectionbecause a Never True to Always True measurement was
deemed more relevant to frequency, which is more pertinent to these questions than level of
agreement. One question for each parent that read, My mother/father doesnt understand what
Im going through, was reverse coded because of its negative implication, unlike the other four
questions per parent. In the process a decision was made to ask about both parents separately
rather than just the parent that uses Facebook the most (if at all). From the five questions on each
parent, an index was created for each parent measuring healthy attachment.
The fourth section, consisting of questions 24 to 31, is made up of eight questions from
the original 103 of the Separation-Individuation Test of Adolescence or SITA (Levine et al.,
1986). This section measures general student independence or lack of anxiety about the
separation process from friends and parents. Questions were selected to create a microcosm of
the full survey by selecting a relatively even array of three of the different categories of questions
listed on the original. Two questions from the category of engulfment anxiety (e.g., I feel my
parents restrict my freedom) and three from the category of separation anxiety (e.g., Being
alone is a very scary idea for me) were chosen and were reverse-scored. Three more were chosen
from the category of healthy separation (e.g., Regardless of how many friends I have, I feel I
can enjoy being by myself). Three questions asked about healthy independence in regards to
friends, two asked about parents, and the other three were ambiguous, for example, Being alone
is a very scary idea for me. The exact wording of a few of these items was marginally adjusted
from the original survey as well in order to create more useful, clearly understood questions. The
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original five-point rating scale was changed to a Likert-type scale to create answer categories
more consistent with other sections. The scale ranged from Strongly Disagree to Strongly
Agree with the numbers in between unlabeled because of the intuitiveness of the scale. From
this section an index was created to measure general student independence.
The fifth section, from questions 32 through 36, measures frequency of different kinds of
parent-student communication. The questions were all asked in a similar format asking some
slight variation of: In general, how often do you [type of action] with a parent via [type of
communication]? The different types of communication with parents measured were phone call,
text, email, video chat, and in person. The response categories for these questions were Never
or Almost Never, A Few Time a Month, About Once a Week, Several Times a Week,
and Almost Everyday. These items, along with question 43, asking how often students
communicated with parents via Facebook, were combined to develop a total communication
index.
Communication pattern questions were placed toward the end of the survey, and the sixth
section, 37 through 45, of Facebook-oriented questions was placed after that in order to prevent
participants from going back and overthinking their answers on communication patterns while
answering the other questions. It was determined that this was the best placement order of
questions to get the most reliable data from the survey. Questions on Facebook determined
whether the student has a Facebook account, how often they use it, whether the mother or father
has a Facebook account, and if so, how often they go on Facebook, whether their parents have
Facebook, whether they are Facebookfriends with eachparent, as well as whether they
block information fromparents, which method that Facebook offers for communication they
use most with their parents, and the most important independent variable of this study, how often
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students communicate with parents via Facebook. For the sake of more in-depth analysis,
question 43 on frequency of student-parent Facebook communication was collapsed into two
categories: Low (A few times a month or less) to High (About once a week or more).
Students were prompted on the survey to skip the last five questions if neither parent had a
Facebook account because by that point the questions were unanswerable and irrelevant.
Survey Creation & Distribution:
The UMass Amherst Spire system was used to find two large lecture classes that yielded
367 student responses. The professors were first asked about administering the surveys to their
classes through in-person meetings at office hours, and permission was granted in both instances.
Further communication was then followed up through email. On the same day during the middle
of the Spring 2012 semester, data was collected from ECON 103, which had a total enrollment of
about 200, and BIO 101, with a total enrollment of about 400. As expected, the majority of
students were present, but neither class was in full attendance. Both classes were decided on in
part because they were general education courses in order to yield a respectable diversity of
academic majors. The surveys and accompanying scan-tron sheets were distributed to all
students present at the beginning of each class and the majority of students finished them in
approximately five minutes. Before, and as, surveys were being handed out, information was
verbally given to the classes about the nature of the survey in addition to instructions to fill out
the surveys anonymously and as completely as possible to their own discretion. Surveys were
collected as students finished them and about ten minutes after the final surveys were handed
out, all surveys, including incompletes, were collected in order to resume class promptly. After
collection, completed surveys were brought to UMass Op-scan Services in order to render the
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raw data. Once the raw data was available in spreadsheet form, it was deposited into SPSS
statistical program software for analysis.
Prior to production in high quantities, the survey went through many stages of revision. A
total of six pretests were done at various stages of the revision process. These six UMass
students, four males and two females, were timed and asked to take the draft surveys and give
any feedback, suggestions, questions, or concerns about the surveys regarding clarity or other
factors. These pretests along with several rounds of suggestions from other capstone students
were instrumental in coming up with the final version of the survey. Alterations were made over
multiple weeks including formatting, reordering of questions and question sections (to have
Facebook questions at the end for example), changing of question and instruction wording, as
well as the addition and deletion of certain questions and improvement of response categories for
reasons such as creating consistency across similar questions. At the conclusion of the pretests
and revision meetings, surveys were revised and final versions were printed.
RESULTS & ANALYSIS
Demographics
The results of the surveys yielded that 40.7% of the respondents were male and 59.3%
were female. In term of year in school, major, and race, a high majority of participants were
freshmen (68.9%), had majors in the School of Natural Sciences or Engineering (65.2%), and
were white (77%). Additionally, the highest reported socio-economic statuses were middle
(49.5%) and upper-middle class (26.9%).
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Secondary Findings:
Prior to investigating intricacies of my proposed hypothesis model, there were some very
important secondary findings to be noted. First, 92.3% of students in this survey reported having
a Facebook account compared to 88% in 2007 (Sterns & Taylor, 2007). And quite staggeringly,
73% of students had at least one parent on Facebook (See Figure 3). That is compared to just
30% of UMass students who reported having a parent on Facebook only three years ago
(Connolly, 2009). This suggests that although its been around since 2004, Facebook has
continued to grow within the population, especially among the older generations. This is possibly
due to the fact that Facebook was first created for college students and young people, and since
theyve had access to it formuch longer, most students who would have a Facebook account
already do, leaving less room for the same type of rapid growth that is being witnessed among
parents. Additionally, now that Facebook has been around for about eight years, younger college
students, around 19 years old, would have had the opportunity to use Facebook at a relatively
young age in their teens, when parental supervision is usually much higher than it is when
students go to college, meaning that parents might be more likely to have Facebook accounts in
2012 compared to parents who had children that were in college when Facebook began because
parents of college students today are much more likely to have seen their children grow up in the
house with Facebook and possibly had rules about using it or even created a personal account to
monitor their children. It is also interesting to note that mothers made up the majority of parental
Facebook users, with 61% of students reporting that their mother was on Facebook, and 39% of
fathers. This is still double the 30% of students that reported having even one parent on
Facebook in 2009 (Connolly, 2009). In fact, over half (54%) report that they are Facebook
friends with their mothers while only about a third (31%) are friends with their fathers.. Three
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years ago, with only 30% of students having parents on Facebook in the first place, that would
not have even been possible.
Figure 3: Parents on Facebook Breakdown
Additionally, in 2007, 49% of Stern & Taylors 364 respondents reported using Facebook
about 10 minutes per day. This study showed an incredible increase in usage in that 83%
reported going on Facebook at least 1-2 times a day and more than half (52.4%) of students
reported going on many time throughout the day. While the nature of Stern & Taylors version
of the question is geared more towards duration of use per day, it is safe to say that going on
Mom Only
33%
Dad Only
12%Both
28%
Neither27%
Parents on Facebook %
Mom Only
Dad Only
Both
Neither
73% ofstudents have at
least one parent onFacebook
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Facebook 1-2 times daily, when that sometimes involves checking notifications, uploading
pictures, commenting, searching, or conversing with someone else, would often entail more than
10 minutes of use, and certainly going on many times throughout the day would allow us to
assume so. A large part of this phenomenon may be attributed to the addition of new features to
Facebook over the years like instant messaging as well as increased use of smartphones which
allow social media sites to be accessed at virtually all times just like a text message.
Contrary to Connollys 2009 study and my initial expectations, this study found that
Facebook does not, in fact, become a replacement for other forms of traditional communication,
but rather seems to grow and shrink alongside the compounded variable oftotal
communication, showing a particularly strong correlation between Facebooking with parents
and texting with them, but showing no negative correlations among any of the different forms
whatsoever. Unlike my previous prediction, this suggests that Facebook inboxing has done very
little, if anything, to replace student-parent emailing. The correlation between total
communication and Facebook communication (Tables 4 & 5) suggests that students who
communicate more with their parents in general also tend to do so via Facebook, simply
providing yet another outlet for connection. The strong correlation between texting and
Facebook use (r=.28, p
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Furthermore, this study showed that Facebook usage with parents in 2012 still falls very
short of rivaling phone conversations, or texting, with Figure 4 illustrating that compared to
phone (46%) and text (44%), only 6% of students reported communicating with their parents via
Facebook several times a week or more (this percentage does not change when controlling for
students with/without a parent on Facebook, mostly because students who did not have a parent
on Facebook finished the survey before this question). Facebook also failed to surpass emailing,
which was reported at 9%. The lower percentages of (almost) all of these forms of
communication compared to the Connolly study (2009) are likely due to the slight difference in
her phrasing of the response being coded which read at least a few times a week versus
several times a week or more. One communication measurement the 2009 study did not
include was texting between parents and students, which in this study was reported as the second
most common form (44%) and was significantly higher than email (9%), which was the second
most common form reported in the 2009 study. As predicted, the phone remained the most
common form of communication between students and parents. The low percentage of parent-
student Facebook communication several times a week or more, compared to the other forms,
indicates that even though Facebook use is still becoming more prevalent for Students, and
especially parents, it is not (at this point at least) acting as a main form of communication for the
two groups between each other. This may be attributed to a common notion that Facebook is
mostly considered a cyberspace in which students interact with ones peers and friends rather
than with coworkers or family members for example.
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Figure 4: Parent-Student Communication Breakdown Several Times a Week or More
Lastly, it appears that while it was not the medium of choice, when students and parents
did in fact communicate on Facebook, the most common form was through wall posts and
comments (20.5%) rather than inboxing and Facebook chat (Figure 5).
Phone, 46
Text, 44
Email, 9
In Person, 7
Facebook, 6
Video Chat, 4
Percent of Students Who Report Using Each Form of Communication "Several Times a Week" or
More
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Figure 5: Types of Facebook Communication
Testing the Model Hypothesis:
As I alluded to previously, the six different sections of the survey created seven key
variables to look at, six of them being indices created from sets of multiple questions. These key
variables for college students are: Facebook use with parents, total communication with parents,
attachment to mother, attachment to father, general independence, social adjustment, and
academic adjustment. Going back to Figure 2, the main research question was to investigate
whether Facebook has any relationship to parental attachment or independence, and thus
academic and social adjustment. However my first consideration was what to include in the
definition of Facebook usage with parents. Was that just communication frequency? Did it
incorporate friendship status with parents on Facebook in some way? So, the first correlations
I looked at were the correlations between being Facebook friends with ones mother or father
and frequency of Facebook communication with parents. As can be seen in Table 1, for both
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Mostly Wall Posts & Comments Mostly Inboxing and Facebook
Chat
Percent (56% Said Neither)
Percent (56% Said Neither)
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males and females, being Facebook friends with either ones mother or fatherstrongly led to
greater Facebook communication with parents. The reason it can be said that this led to rather
than correlatedto greater Facebook communication, unlike many of the two-way relationships
in this study, is because (although in some cases they be able to see the main profile picture, etc.)
people cannot communicate effectively on Facebook until they are accepted Facebook friends.
Therefore it was determined that being Facebook friends with a parent was primarily an
imbedded factor in ones Facebook communication frequencies with that parent. Due to this
inherent relationship, exploration of separate models forFacebook communication with
parents and Facebook friendship with parents were not necessary, and instead, all Facebook
usage or Facebook communication measurements already involved the aspect of friendship.
With this in consideration, further references in this study to Facebook communication are
assumed to incorporate the intrinsic existence of Facebook friendship.
Table 1: Correlations of Facebook Communication w/ Parents and Friendship Status, by Gender
How often communicate with
parent on Facebook FB Friends with Mother FB Friends with Father
Males .21* .37**
Females .51**.21**
*p
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correlate to attachment AND to independence. The next step of the hypothesis was that both of
those factors would then correlate to both forms of adjustment. However, it was desirable to first
test for direct correlations between Facebook communication and the three main variables
because of the possibility that Facebook would correlate directly with adjustment, showing a
significant and direct relationship regardless of attachment or independence. Additionally, to
fulfill the hypothesized model, student-parent Facebook use would, at the least, need to correlate
with attachment and/or independence, and a test for direct correlations to the main variables
would prove as a good starting point.
The results showed no significant correlations between student Facebook use and
Independence or either form of adjustment. There did appear to be a correlation between
Facebook use and parental attachment, however upon controlling for sex, it was discovered that
these correlations were gendered in that higher Facebook use with parents by males correlated to
higher attachment to fathers, while higher Facebook use with parents by females correlated to
higher attachment to mothers (Figure 6, Tables 4 & 5).
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Figure 6:Discovering Direct Correlations
The gendered results of this study in terms of both students and parents so far suggested that the
overall model wouldnt apply to parents generally, but to mothers for females and fathers for
males. A slightly more complex version of the initial hypothesis model would be needed.
Since Facebook communication was found to correlate to parental attachment for
students and parents of the same gender, it was then necessary to test, with the new parameters of
gender, whether these attachments would go with higher levels of independence or adjustment.
Going back to Figure 1 of the Mattanah et al. study (2004), there is a premise that three basic
relationships exist:
1. Attachment correlates to independence.2. Independence correlates to overall adjustment to college (including social and
academic)
3. Attachment correlates to overall academic adjustment to college
Communication
w/ Parents on FB Independence
Academic &
SocialAdjustment
Attachment
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Therefore, the next logical step was to test these relationships in regards to the new survey data
with gender differences factored in.
Female Analysis
Results varied, showing that for females, attachment to both mothers and fathers
correlated significantly with general independence (Figure 7, Table 2). Subsequently, it was
found that independence strongly correlated to both social and academic adjustment for females.
Both of these findings support the Mattanah et al. (2004) study. Additionally, attachment to
mothers and/or fathers strongly correlated to academic adjustment of college females, while
attachment to mothers in particular, also correlated with social adjustment. Aside from the lack
of connection between attachment to father and social adjustment, the findings of the Mattanah
et al. (2004) study sturdily hold up for females (Table 2). Since Facebook has been shown to
correlate with attachment to mothers, it can be determined that the main hypothesisthat
Facebook would lead to higher parental attachment levels, subsequently correlating to college
adjustment and independenceholds true for college females with their mothers. This
continuum can be followed by the bold arrows in Figure 7.
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Figure 7: Model for Females
.01
-.05 .24*.32*
.07
.28*
.34*
.19* .30*
.00*p
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between male attachment to father and independence is likely close to significance, but the
relationship between male attachment to mother and independence, r=.10, is even lower, while
the rvalue for females is more than double what it is for males with either parent). The lack of
a significant relationship between male parental attachment and independence is contrary to the
basic model proposed by Mattanah et al. (2004), creating a major disconnect in the hypothesized
model of Facebook and adjustment. Still, it remains significant that for males, Facebook
communication with parents correlates to attachment to father, which correlates to academic
adjustment, allowing for another indirect, yet important connection to be made. As for females,
attachment to either mother or father correlates to higher academic adjustment for males.
However, the full continuum is not completed with males and their mothers because, as with
females, there is no correlation between Facebook use with parents and attachment to the parent
of opposite sex. Additionally, there is no connection between academic adjustment and social
adjustment for males, meaning there is no connection (not even indirect) between male Facebook
usage with parents and social adjustment based on the variables at hand.
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Figure 8: Model for Males
-.06
.12* .12.22*
-.03
.13.18*
.05 .10
-.01*p
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took the correlations shown by Facebook use with parents and compared them to other forms of
parental communication. One of the connections that had been established previously for females
was that Facebook communication with parents correlated to higher attachment levels with their
mothers. However, upon testing the other forms of communication, it appeared that all the other
forms of communication on the survey besides In person communication (phone, text, email,
and video chat) also correlated with higher attachment levels to mothers (Table 4). Phone
communication for females was the only medium that proved to correlate with attachment to
both parents. Additionally for females, texting and emailing with parents showed direct
correlations to higher independence while phone conversations showed a direct correlation to
academic adjustment, links that are absent in the Facebook correlations.
One of the major results for males was that Facebook use with parents correlated to
higher attachment to fathers. However, texting and emailing with parents were also shown to
correlate with attachment to fathers, while unlike Facebook use, phone conversations, texting,
emailing, and video chatting for males correlated with attachment to mothers. Video chatting
with parents also revealed a direct correlation to academic adjustment for males, which Facebook
use did not (Table 5).
It was hard to make out why exactly some forms of communication with parents relate to
attachment, independence, and adjustment levels while others dont. However, one important
point to take from this was that Facebook was not alone in its ability to correlate with attachment
to parents for either males or females. This suggests that despite Facebooks relatively unique
and certainly more versatile interface, it does not act as a supreme medium for increasing
attachment to parents, independence, or social/academic adjustment compared to other media.
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However, it is pertinent to recognize that all forms of communication with parents for
males or females in this study correlated verystrongly with total communication (Tables 4 &
5) which was an index created by taking the mean score of every communication medium in the
survey (FB, phone, text, email, video chat, in-person). What is significant about this is that total
communication was shown to create stronger correlations to attachment, independence, and
adjustment than Facebook or any other medium across the board. For females, the correlation
between total communication and attachment to mother had more than double the strength
of the already significant relationship between Facebook communication with parents and
attachment to mother. Additionally, total communication with parents was shown to correlate
with both independence and academic adjustment for females. In males, total communication
with parents was linked to a stronger level of attachment to fathers than Facebook
communication (or any other form) alone, and it also showed a strong correlation with
attachment to mother (Table 5).
Because individual forms of parent-student communication all appear to create a strong
funnel effect into total communication, it suggests that in order to increase the chances for an
environment of better attachment to parents for male and female students, and better
independence and academic adjustment for females in particular, it is more about increasing
ones overall communication with parents, and less about which medium it is done through.
Greater total communication between students and parent appears to facilitate positive results,
and Facebook use adds to this total value, allowing it to take on a complementary role. This both
weakens and strengthens the hypothesis, because while Facebook is not unique from other forms
of parental communication in its ability to impact attachment levels, it still plays a supportive
part in and adds to total communication, which exhibits even stronger correlations to
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attachment, independence, and adjustment than any single form of communication on its own
(Figures 9 & 10, Tables 4 & 5).
Figure 9: Female Correlations to Total Communication
.17*
.13 .24*
.32*
.19*
.19* .28*
.51* .34*
.30*
.45*
-.05*p
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Table 4: Major Correlations for Females
Total
Comm
Attachment
to Father
Attachment
to MotherIndependence
Academic
Adjustment
Social
Adjustment
FB .51* -.05 .20* .07 .01 .00
Phone Call .60* .27* .35* .13 .23* .00
Text .72* .05 .37* .14* .05 .04
Email .49* .01 .23* .17* .10 -.02
Video Chat .32* .06 .16* .04 .03 -.05
In person .28* -.07 -.01 .00 .06 -.14
TotalCommunication
--- .13 .45* .19* .17* -.05
*p
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CONCLUSION:
Findings:
Findings showed that student-parent Facebook communication correlated with higher
attachment levels to parents of the same gender as the student, while direct relationships did not
exist between student-parent Facebook use and independence, academic adjustment, or social
adjustment (Figure 6). However, for females, because attachment to either parent correlates with
higher independence and academic adjustment, independence correlates with both academic and
social adjustment, and maternal attachment also correlates with better social adjustment, a chain-
of-relationships model, like the one shown in Figure 7 can be supported to show how greater
Facebook communication with parents plays a direct role in creating greater maternal
attachment, and a positive yet indirect role in creating healthy independence and better academic
and social adjustment to college.
Similarly for males, because Facebook communication was shown to have a direct
correlation with paternal attachment, and parental attachment correlates with academic
adjustment, Facebook use with parents may also play a positive and indirect role between those
variables (Figure 8).
In addition, Facebook use with parents, like other ICTs measured in the study, did show a
significant connection to a students total communication level with parents, which was linked
to maternal attachment, independence, and academic adjustment for females, as well as
attachment to both parents for males. These trends suggest that Facebook use with parents plays
a supporting role for college students in reaching healthier parental attachment levels, greater
independence, and consequently greater academic adjustment, supporting a slightly modified
version of the first thread of the original two-tailed hypothesis (Figure 2). As can be seen from
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the diagrams in Figures 7-10, more of the hypothesized connections hold true for females than
males both when total communication is factored into the equation (which has been shown to
strengthen connections) and when it is not. Because parental attachment appears to be inherently
more important for independence, academic and social adjustment for females (Tables 2 & 3),
and Facebook communication shows both direct and indirect relationships to parental attachment
(Figures 7-10), it can be determined based on the data in this study that increased levels of all
forms of parental communication for students, not excluding Facebook, are more critical for
female students than males.
The major goal of this study was to investigate how the use of the most pervasive form of
social media in our culture relates to a handful of critical variables important to the parent-
college student relationship including: parental attachment, overall independence (Individuation),
and social/academic adjustment to college. Based on the results, it has been determined that
Facebook use is relevant due to its direct, gendered correlations with parental attachment levels,
as well as its relationship to increased overall communication with parents, which is
subsequently related to increased levels of independence and adjustment for female college
students.
Limitations:
One of the obvious limitations in virtually any undergraduate capstone study is lack of
funding. A known lack of funding at the outset of this study subsequently led to the
brainstorming and creation of methods that would of course require little to no funds in order to
collect as much reliable data as possible. An increased timeframe for data collection and
availability of funds to do so would have allowed for greater options, for example, the capability
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to travel to more classes and even multiple universities to gain more diversity and quantity of
respondents while broadening the results of the study. A challenging part of any original study is
working with and trying to make the most of the (possibly limited) resources at hand.
In addition, while I was satisfied with the high rate of freshmen respondents in the study
based on the notion that as new college students, they are very immersed in this phenomenon of
adjustment, in a more ideal situation the study would have po tentially included more
upperclassmen in the interest of creating a more diverse sample among grade levels and possibly
measuring differences among them. This might also be considered a limitation to this study.
Another potential limitation in this research and its findings is the inherent issue of
causality. While one can deduce an educated analysis of the importance and direction of the
correlations found, such as Facebooks link to parental attachment, the nature of these
correlations are that the true causal direc