Social Media’s Influence on Parenting, Essay Example

Databases such as Google Scholar will be used to search for peer-reviewed journal articles and books to be used to further examine this topic. Peer-reviewed journals will be used preferentially over books because this information is refereed, but it may be necessary to supplement this information with published books due to the recent importance of this topic. Furthermore, to ensure that the information used is pertinent, resources will only be used if they have been published within the last five years.

The search terms that will be used to find these resources will include “social media”, “parenting”, “social media AND parenting”, “impact of social media on parenting”, and “parenting influence on social media”. In this manner, all combinations of the key search terms will be utilized to identify the maximum available articles on this topic.

After conducting a preliminary search of the articles retrieved using this search method, it appears that it would be valuable to include articles such as “Social and technical challenges in parenting teens’ social media use” and “New mothers and media use: Associations between blogging, social networking, and maternal well-being”. Two books that will be used include “Screen-Smart parenting: How to find balance and benefit in your child’s use of social media, apps, and digital devices” and “Parenting in the age of digital technology”. Using these resources will be valuable because it provides professional advice on the subject of the use of social media for parents and how knowledge of social media could maximize the protection of children. Furthermore, this information provides useful guidance to the parenting process through these social media sources.

Comparative Perspectives Outline

1. This trend will be discussed with regards to parenting in the United Kingdom because these individuals have different cultural values but access to the same information that social media users in the United States have due to a language similarity (Watts, 2003).
2. There is a high number of young parents using social media in the United Kingdom because this is a popular activity among young adults; thus, it is likely that information presented on these sites also influence the parenting of these individuals (Johnson, 2015).
3. The influence of social media on parenting in the United States appears to differ based on personal beliefs, gender, culture, and income level (Van Dijck, 2013).
4. Reliance on social media for parenting advice has negative effects because the information posted on these websites are not monitored, and therefore not reliable when considering important aspects of parenting, such as questions regarding the health of the child (Gentle, 2012).
5. The use of social media for parenting advice enforces education when the information is correct but detracts from this institution when the information given is incorrect; parenting advice on social media can increase the employment of individuals who work for parenting websites and are hired specifically to attract people to these locations on the web; for the same reason that the use of social media for parenting advice is expected to impact employment, this trend will make health care professionals more likely to post useful information concerning parenting online in order to make this information accessible to young mothers.
6. Another subculture this trend could be compared to is the use of social media among young people in society; the use of social media appears to be common amongst younger and younger groups of children as time progresses.

References

Gentle, Anne (2012). Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation (2nd ed.). Laguna Hills, CA: XML Press.

Johnson, Steven Berlin (2005). Everything Bad Is Good for You. New York: Riverhead Books.

Van Dijck, José. (2013). The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Watts, Duncan J. (2003). Six degrees: The science of a connected age. London: Vintage.