Getting a High-Speed Family Connection: Associations between Family Media Use and Family Connection.

The way families have used the media has substantially changed over the past decade. Within the framework of family systems theory, this paper examines the relations between family media use and family connection in a sample of 453 adolescents (mean age of child = 14.32 years. SD = 0.98, 52% female) and their parents. Results revealed that cell phone use and watching television or movies were the most common mediums used in families. Analyses also revealed that greater amounts of family cell phone use, coviewing of TV and movies, and coplaying of video games were associated with higher levels of family connection. Conversely, engagement over social networking sites was related to lower levels of family connection, at least from the adolescent's perspective. Implications for practitioners are discussed.Key Words: adolescents, connection, family, media, parents.The past 10 years have seen a major shift in the way families experience media. Previously, it was not uncommon for a family to pop a bowl of popcorn and gather round the family television set. Now, the media are all-consuming and all-encompassing in many ways. Not only can families sit down and watch a television show together, they can simultaneously be tenting on their cell phones, listening to their I-pods, downloading content from the Web, chatting with friends over the Internet, and checking out what people are doing on Facebook (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010). This media explosion has potentially changed the way that families use media and the effects that the media can have on the family and on individual outcomes. Whereas some may postulate that media influences are pulling individuals and families apart (e.g., Turkle, 2011), others contend that media has become an integral part of mainstream family life that can have positive as well as negative effects on family functioning (Hoover, Clark, & Alters, 2004; Jordan, Hershey, McDevitt, & Heitzler, 2006; Takeuchi, 2011; Walsh, Goldman, & Brown, 1996). Regardless of effects, researchers have shown that media do not always have to be in competition with family members for time or attention in the lives of adolescents. In fact, parents and adolescents are often engaging in media exploits together (Austin & Pinkelton, 1997), using it to stay connected (Pettigrew, 2009) and structuring family routines through its use (Lull, 1 980). Whereas most of the extant research on media effects focuses on the outcomes of individual media use, family systems theory suggests that interactions between individuals in a family creates an open and ongoing system that is continually influenced by the environment, which, in this case, would include media influences. Thus, this study attempts to use a family systems approach to examine whether family media use is associated with positive interactions within the family environment. Specifically, the current study utilized both parent and adolescent reports to examine whether family engagement in various media forms was associated with high levels of family connectedness. It should be noted that unless otherwise specified, the term media as used in the current paper should be taken to mean the act of using all electronic mediums (e.g., playing video games, watching TV, texting on a cell phone) as opposed to the actual medium itself (e.g, video game console, DVD player, cell phone). When referring to the actual individual medium, we will refer to it specifically, by name.Normative Media UseRoughly a decade ago, Roberts, Foehr, Rideout, and Brodie (1999) wrote that the "average" American child between 2 and 1 8 years old spent 5 hours and 45 minutes a day with electronic media. In a more recent evaluation, the Kaiser Family Foundation (2010) reported that 8- to 18-year-olds are devoting closer to 7.5 hours to entertainment media a day, which adds up to approximately 53 hours in a week. Such use includes accessing material on television sets, DVD players, CD players, radios, computers, video gaming systems, Internet connections (with the highest amount of time devoted to social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace), cell phones, handheld gaming devices, and iPods or other MP3 players (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010). …