Embracing Technology as a Tool for Healthy Attachments in Adolescence
Thirteen-year-old Kayla is dragged away from her social media by the interruption of her father's voice at the dinner table. Dad is trying to connect but Kayla rejects him, preferring the world inside her phone. At first glance, this scene in the 2018 film Eighth Grade feeds into common stereotypes that teens are bewitched by social media, which causes them to withdraw from their parents and become obsessed with peers. But does technology really take adolescents away from parents?
To understand this question, our research team in the department of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, designed a daily diary study to look at how teenagers are balancing time with parents and friends through face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. Contrary to stereotypes, our study found that adolescents who spent more time communicating with friends via technology also spent more, not less, time with parents compared to those who had less contact with friends. Likewise, Eighth Grade ultimately rejects the idea that adolescents use technology to get away from parents and instead paints an authentic portrait of how teens use their phones to explore new horizons while maintaining closeness with parents. In one illustrative example, Kayla uses technology to connect with her peer group but when she is upset and wants to leave the pool party of a popular girl at her school, her dad is just a phone call away to support her.
The teenage years are important for the expansion of healthy attachments, which includes feelings of emotional support, trust, and commitment in close relationships alongside feelings of autonomy and a sense of personal boundaries. Attachment styles begin to develop in the early stages of life based on interactions between infants and their caregivers. When babies receive predictable and appropriate care, they will begin to develop a secure attachment style in which they feel safe enough to explore their expanding world and trust they can seek the close support of an adult when in need. If these basic needs are not met, a child may develop an anxious or insecure attachment style in which they lack the ability to depend on their parents, creating a pattern of behavior that impacts how secure and confident they will feel in future social relationships. The nature of attachment shifts during adolescence and the crucial task is for parents to recognize their child’s growing needs for autonomy—adolescents who feel that their parents respect their personal choices are more likely to feel emotionally close to parents and will transfer that healthy balance of closeness and autonomy to future relationships.
In the latter half of the 20th century in Western cultures, adolescents’ development of emotional attachments to friends and romantic partners has been marked by greater distance from parents. Might we see less distance from parents with the convenience and portability of communication technologies making it easy for adolescents to stay connected while exploring on their own? Our study asked 169 high schoolers, ages 14 to 18, to complete daily diary surveys about their social interactions before bed for six consecutive days. On the last day of the study, the teens filled out a survey about their relationships with friends and parents. The survey also included scales to assess adolescents’ feelings of autonomy in relationships with their parents. The results suggested that technology can be used to enhance both autonomy and closeness during periods of transition in parent-adolescent attachments. The more adolescents communicated with friends and parents via technology, the more face-to-face time and emotional closeness they had with them. The study also found that the more teens communicated with their parents via technology, the more they felt a combination of autonomy and emotional closeness with them. Teens who texted more frequently with friends were more likely to make decisions independently from parents. Contrary to fears that technology is making us less social, our findings illustrate how digital tools are helping teens connect in new ways that honors their growing needs for autonomy. In Eighth Grade, Kayla illustrates these findings when she develops new friendships with older high schoolers and a boy in her grade. As a result of this independence, Kayla spends more time socializing with her dad, too.
Thinking of the phone as a transitional object is helpful for understanding how teens are balancing autonomy and closeness with parents in the digital age. During childhood, transitional objects offer children more independence while also providing connectedness and safety. Transitioning a child’s human contact through an object like a blanket or toy reminds them of their parents. Likewise, a smartphone provides the same support for teens. Not only does the phone create opportunities for freedom, it also grounds teens - like we see with Kayla at the pool party in Eighth Grade - in knowing they can connect with their parents anytime and anywhere, which may lay the foundation for ongoing secure attachment with parents even as teens form new emotional attachments outside the family.
Take Away Message for Storytellers
Eighth Grade parallels our research by showing that Kayla’s phone provides her new opportunities for socioemotional growth and social identity in her journey from childhood to adulthood. Eighth Grade resists exploiting the idea that adolescents use technology to replace parents with friends. Instead, it shows a true to life image of teens using social media to navigate their complex worlds of friends and family. This is what Eighth Grade does so well—it shows how important communication technologies are for Kayla’s growing independence and for her feelings of trust and support with her dad during a somewhat turbulent time of transition. The film makes a deliberate choice to show how Kayla uses communication technologies to support, not hinder her development. Our research also supports this more positive view of communication technologies. Ultimately, storytellers should continue to find ways to portray teens using digital tools for both autonomy and closeness, seeing these goals as compatible rather than contradictory.
Actionable Insights
Show characters in parent-child relationships engaging in healthy online communication
Show young characters using technology to connect offline in face-to-face interactions with friends and family
Show adolescent characters who use technology to gain independence and maintain closeness with their parents
Zoe Peterson
Department of Psychology, UC Santa Cruz
Adriana Manago, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology, UC Santa Cruz
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers
Based on the article: Manago, A.M., Brown, G., Lawley, K., Anderson, G. (2020). Adolescents’ daily face-to-face and computer-mediated communication: Associations with autonomy and closeness to parents and friends. Developmental Psychology, 56, 153-164.