Social and Technical Challenges in Parenting Teens' Social Media Use

With millions of teenagers on the Internet, millions of parents are trying to understand what their teens are doing and why. Understanding how technology use impacts teens' learning, growth, and social development is critical for their health and wellbeing and for the welfare of the family. Yet, balancing parent authority with teen privacy and autonomy is difficult. We conducted an interview study with 16 parents to examine challenges in "technoparenting"-parenting teens' technology use. Parents said they wanted more transparency in their teens' use of cell phones and the Internet and they struggled with their own unfamiliarity with technology. Technoparenting is a distributed problem and, surprisingly, parents wanted support and collaboration from the broader community. We conclude with design implications for a socially translucent "digital window."