Early adolescent disclosure and parental knowledge regarding online activities: Social anxiety and parental rule-setting as moderators
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
van Zalk, N
van Zalk, M
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Early adolescents spend a lot of time online, yet little is currently known about the links between parental rule-setting, adolescent disclosure about online activities, and whether social anxiety may interfere with these processes. Using a longitudinal sample of 526 adolescents (269 girls; Mage = 14.00) and their parents (79% mothers, Mage = 43.66), the results from the current study showed low correspondence between parental knowledge, adolescent disclosure, as well as parents’ and adolescents’ ratings of parental legitimacy to set boundaries about online activities. High social anxiety interacted with high adolescent-rated parental rule-setting in predicting the least disclosure about chatting with strangers and posting online content over time. Also, high social anxiety interacted with low parent-rated control to predict more adolescent disclosure about chatting with strangers and money spent online over time. Thus, social anxiety and parental rule-setting moderated the links between disclosure and knowledge for some early adolescent online activities. Our results conflict with the value typically placed on parental rule-setting in online contexts, at least for socially anxious adolescents.
Date Issued
2020-02-01
Date Acceptance
2017-12-01
Citation
Current Psychology, 2020, 39 (1), pp.287-298
ISSN
1046-1310
Start Page
287
End Page
298
Journal / Book Title
Current Psychology
Volume
39
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Subjects
1701 Psychology
1702 Cognitive Sciences
Social Psychology
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2017-12-15