Social Media in the Eye of Parents

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the views of parents about social media. In accordance with phenomenological research design, one of qualitative research methods, the data was collected with semi-structured interview questions developed by the researcher under the control of experts. In the determination of the work group of the study the criterion sampling was used. The data was collected by recording the interviews and analysed by using the content analysis. In the findings of the study, the opinions of the parents about the effects of social median on students’ behaviours were grouped as positive and negative behaviours. While parents stated that “gathering information about the lessons” and “positive shares” are important positive behaviours, students’ “wasting time” and “causing violence” were stated as negative behaviours. An important ratio of the parents stated that social media may improve students academically, however, more than half of the parents stated that social media could not improve students school success as students waste their time on social media and do not use it for educational purposes. According to parents, social media supports education by providing easiness to reach information and including so many sources. Causing waste of time and being exposed to undesirable content are accepted as obstacles to education. In order to have a more educative social media, parents suggest that we should raise awareness of using social media healthily. People should share more educational sources on social media and a mechanism to supervise social median must be developed.