Parents’ Attitudes and Opinions towards Their Children's Use of Technology

Abstract

The aim of the study is to determine the level of parents’ attitudes towards their children's use of information and communication technologies and to obtain parental views on the use of technology. To this end, the study was carried out with parents whose children were studying at primary and secondary school levels. Data were collected from 417 guardians for the quantitative dimension of the study, which was designed with a mixed methodological approach in which qualitative and quantitative models were used together, and interviews were conducted with 10 parents in the same sample group for the qualitative dimension. For the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple comparison tests and descriptive analysis technique was used. The results of the analysis of the data showed that the attitudes of the parents towards their children's use of technology were at a "good" level. In the study, no significant difference was found between the attitudes of parents towards their children's use of technology and the gender variables, while there was a significant difference between the variables of age, educational level, occupation, computer usage skills and computer usage time. The study also addressed which technological device their children use for which purpose, the technology-assisted applications used by their children for educational purposes, and the support given by parents to their children in terms of knowledge, skills, time management and safe use when using technology, and the positive and negative aspects of technology use, and various suggestions were made to parents for the correct and effective use of technology by parents.