How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

Generation Smartphone:
How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence
Sylvie Stoloff
Boston Latin School
March 30, 2015

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

Introduction
I got my first cell phone when I was eleven years old. It was a brand new LG
Chocolate in maroon, and my parents gave it to me in a clean white box at the Cheesecake
Factory where we were celebrating my graduation from the fifth grade. The next year, I was
going to be taking public transportation to school. I needed this phone--a simple phone, it
could text, call, and take pictures--so that I could contact my parents in case of emergency.
With my shiny new phone in hand, the whole world of the number 43 bus was made
available to me, and I surely could not explore its route without it. My mother texted me
every day after school with the same message--please check in--three annoying words
which still haunt my inbox around 2:15 pm to this day.
I was exposed to a whole new world that day at the Cheesecake Factory. But Im
sure the fifth graders of today have even more at their disposal with the increasing
popularity of smartphones, equipped with internet and GPS access, among other things.
Smartphones enable the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
and Snapchat. I dont even think they sell LG Chocolates anymore.
So what kinds of messages are teenagers of my generation getting from their
parents, as so many families have iPhones and Androids? How often are they
communicating with each other? How have parent-teenager dynamics shifted as
smartphone culture grips urban society? I set out to find the answer to these questions-more specifically, to determine the effect smartphone culture has on urban teenagers ability
to think and act independently of their parents. Although not all urban teenagers and/or
parents own smart phones or cell phones, in an effort to study the effects of cell phone and
smartphone use, I have limited my study to the investigation of those who do.

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

Smartphone culture is a term I came up with for the purpose of my research. It

refers to the societal habit (instigated by the adoption of smartphones, but not limited to
their use alone) of relying on information and/or communication made instantly available.
This could mean having the ability to contact and communicate with someone regardless of
their physical location at all hours of the day. It could mean Googling a quick question and
having an answer appear instantaneously before ones eyes. It could mean checking
grades online through online grading systems in order to know about each and every
change right as it occurs.
I began to explore how smartphone culture comes into play in parent-teenager
relationships among urban families who use cell phones to communicate, specifically in the
context of independence. I broke independence further down into two categories: social and
academic independence, which will form the chapters of the paper that follows. Social
independence refers to teenagers relative independence from their parents when it comes
to managing their social lives, including aspects of acting independently--where they
travel, how late they stay out, who they hang out with--and thinking independently--how
they shape their ideas and interpretations of the world around them. Academic
independence describes how independent teens are in managing their own academics on a
day-to-day basis.
I collected my data by designing a comprehensive online survey administered to 209
people--91 high school students, 68 college students, and 50 parents of either high school
or college students. For the purpose of comparison, I asked the parents to reflect on their
experiences in high school and college (if they attended one), and then asked them many of
the same questions I asked of the current high school and college students in my study.
Later, I conducted follow-up interviews with a number of these participants, probing further
into their responses to some of the survey questions. I also reached out to four professors

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

who have studied similar topics--Harvard professor Howard Gardner, University of Denver
professor Lynn Schofield Clark, University of Haifa professor Ilan Talmud, and Harvard Law
School professor Urs Gasser--and asked them questions via email that related to some of
the findings I had observed in my own study.
90% of the high school students in my study attend Boston Latin School, a public
high school in the center of Boston which pulls only from students residing in the city, and
which I currently attend. Over 90% of the college students are recent graduates from the
school, and all of the parents have children at Boston Latin School as well. Entrance to the
school is based on a combination of standardized test scores and middle school grades
alone, regardless of what part of the city a student lives in. This means that the student
body represents most of the neighborhoods of Boston and therefore provides a
geographically diverse sampling of urban teens, but it also means that BLS students
represent some of the more academically-inclined students in the city. Many have higher
socioeconomic standings than students at other public schools in Boston. The sampling of
students who participated in my study, though, is diverse. Student experiences range from
those whose parents dont speak English and leave them to manage all academics on their
own, to students whose parents have advanced degrees and use that knowledge to help
their children daily with their homework.

Social Independence
Smartphones place the world in the back pocket of almost every teenager in America.
Or, as is most often the case once dismissal bells ring, right in the palm of their hands. With
the click of only 140 buttons (a small feat when undertaken by the accomplished fingers of
digital natives), teenagers today can communicate with thousands of people at one time,

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

people who live hundreds of miles away, who could potentially be reading such messages
thanks to online translators in dozens of languages.
It is evident that smartphones play a huge role in creating a more digitallyinterconnected world. But they also assume an equally important role in connecting people
who see each other every day. People who are not divided by dramatic spatial boundaries,
who occupy roles in relationships as old and constant as human nature itself--parent,
sibling, child, friend.
By providing a means of constant communication between parents and their teenage
children, smartphones have altered the manner in which parents communicate with their
teens, and the extent to which they are involved in their social lives. In much the same way
as a teenager can defy spacial boundaries by tweeting at someone who lives across the
country, for example, parents can defy spacial boundaries by communicating with their
children when they are not together.
Smartphones have torn down the physical boundaries that used to determine when
parenting was done. When my mom was growing up, she was sent off to school in the
morning and told to be home by dark, with not a question in between. Now, with cell
phones, parents can parent 24/7, regardless of where their children are. They can require
constant updates of their childrens whereabouts, unlike in a time before cell phones.
So what does this mean for the independence of teenagers whose parents have
extended their realm? In this case, smartphones present an interesting dichotomy: on the
one hand, smartphone culture increases parent-child interaction and leads to what
researcher Lynn Schofield Clark calls a tetheri that sometimes generates more dependent
youth. But this is often accompanied, or at times overcome, by a sense of freedom
endowed to teenagers by the ability to negotiate with their parents on the go. Smartphones
also enable social interactions that are not made visible to parents, an important tool for

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

adolescents looking to distance themselves from their parents, as so many often do.
Depending on the nature of the parent-child relationship, smartphones can either extend or
restrict teenagers independence from their parents with respect to managing their social
lives.

Acting Independently

Clarks tether often binds teens to parents who tend to be on the protective side to begin
with. Most sociologists agree that smartphones and smartphone culture merely exacerbate
social norms that currently exist anyway. But they exacerbate them in ways that could come
to replace the norms we observe today.
Parents armed with smartphones have become space invaders of their childrens
social lives, to borrow a term from Lynda and Stephen Williams paper of the same name ii.
In it, they conclude that the phone has undoubtedly helped to retain parental control by
giving [parents] the opportunity to enter their childrens space at any time, a phenomenon
which detraditionalizes parent-child relationships.
In addition to requiring updates and check-ins, as my mother calls the daily texts she
sends me, parents can use smartphones to answer questions their children electronically
ask them. With smartphones, its much easier for young people to text or call their parents
for advice and feedback, a fact that may be contributing to an extended adolescence,
writes Clark in her book The Parent App: Understanding Families in a Digital Age iii, alluding
to a trend which will be discussed later in this paper.
The ability of teenagers to have their questions immediately answered (sometimes by
parents), without having to do much critical thinking themselves, is just one of the reasons
todays generation of youth is marked by a craving for instant gratification, which the Pew

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

Research Center marked a negative side effect of teens relationship with technology iv.
Physical smartphones, coupled with the societal effects of the general expectation that
others will also have smartphones and that information will be readily available, feed this
instant gratification trend. It causes teenagers to become dependent not only on the
smartphone itself, but also on the person on the other end of the line, the person providing
the instantaneous answers. For certain people--and for certain questions--that person is
Google or Mapquest or Yelp. But for others, its their mom or dad, always at the ready to
answer any prevailing question. As a result, these particular teenagers will become more
independent on their parents for assistance in making decisions and thinking critically.
However, most of the high school students in my study who indicated that cell phones
decreased their social independence attributed that fact to different causes. The main culprit
seemed to be the accountability that comes along with being tethered.
Isabelle D., a high school senior at Boston Latin School, indicated that having a cell
phone slightly decreased her independence from her parents when it came to managing her
social life. Since they know I have a cell phone, I have no excuse not to ask permission,
she explained. And because her parents demand to know where she is quite frequently via
cell phone, and disapprove of some destinations and/or plans that they wouldnt know about
if not for the device, Isabelle finds they restrict her freedom in this regard.
When asked if her parents track her cell phone with GPS devices, Isabelle laughed
and explained that her parents dont track her phone, but she sometimes signs on to her
fathers Apple account to track his phone when he is late picking her up. This anecdote
gives light to the fact that accountability can work both ways through the invisible
technological tether. But in Isabelles case, it works in one direction much more than the
other, restricting her independence in managing her own social affairs.

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

Some parents take it much farther in that direction. 13% of the parents in my study
tracked their childrens phones with GPS devices. And surprisingly, many of these parents
indicated that they did not consider themselves very strict parents. Important to note,
however, is that the pool of parents from which I collected my data are the parents who are
already more involved in their childrens lives, thanks to the bias of voluntary response and
my surveys distribution at a parent open house night. Of the high school students who
participated, whose parents most likely represent more diverse levels of involvement, only
5% indicated that their parents tracked their cell phones. Still, this marks an unprecedented
level of complexity smartphones add to parent-child relationships.
Regardless of how frequently tracking devices are employed, their use with
teenagers whenever it occurs tends to cut into social independence. Lynn Schofield Clark,
in her discussion of parental surveillance via GPS, points out that the devices are as much
a source of anxiety for parents as they are a tool for nipping potential problems in the bud.
Personally, Im more concerned about how intrusiveness can backfire and can contribute to
raising overly dependent and self-focused young people, she writes in The Parent Appv.
There is definitely a fine line between utilizing tracking devices for safety--the most common
explanation among parents in my study--and using them intrusively.
Whether or not something is intrusive is definitely relative. But its clear that GPS tracking
restricts teenagers abilities to make decisions that in past generations would most often be
left to the teenager and not to the parent. Decisions that pertain to social independence, like
where to go after school and who to hang out with.
One anonymous parent indicated in my study that they checked a GPS tracking
device every day, just to see where [their son] is. The parent continued, it has nothing to
do with worrying about him breaking rules, since he never does. In this case, the parent is
monitoring their teenagers every activity, even though they readily admit that there is

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

nothing to be worried about. Like many others, this parent is monitoring and influencing
his/her sons life to a much greater degree than parents in a time before smartphones could
manage to do.
Another parent checks the device when his/her daughter is going out with friends I
don't particularly trust. Again, this is not a case of explicit rule-breaking, but of general
suspicion. Parents with smartphones can act on feelings like this in a much more direct way.
Of course, distrust is not a concept new to this generation of parents. But parents before
smartphones couldnt as easily prevent activities they disliked, since they had no way of
knowing exactly where their children were at any given time. GPS lets parents today do
that, and consequently gives them a tool to restrict their teenagers social independence.
Its not just parents who use GPS tracking that have a more solid knowledge of their
childrens general whereabouts. Out of all the parents who participated in the study, most
indicated that they were aware of where their children were and what they were doing
somewhere between 90 and 99% of the time, although answers ranged from 40% to 100%.
Nevertheless, just because tracking reduces teens independence doesnt
necessarily mean it makes them more dependent on their parents, or more likely to rely on
them. Most of the teens who indicated that their parents track their phones marked that the
tracking device affects their decisions very little, in terms of where they go and how late they
stay out. Constant parental surveillance, though, does shift the dynamics between parents
and children. Most surveilled teens found the tracking invasive.
I corresponded with Lynn Schofield Clark directly about this topic, asking her opinion.
She was not a fan: I guess I see some parents using surveillance as an inappropriate
means of exercising authority, because its one-sided rather than mutual, she writes (Clark,
L., personal communication, January 28, 2015). An overly-surveilled teenager has a right to
feel violated, just as we all feel violated when we learn that Facebook can share our

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information with any other company and we are taken aback when we learn that the NSA
can--and has--retrieved the contents of private phone conversations. We need to respect
the rights of our children and avoid anything that violates those rights so that they, too, will
respect the rights of others.
It is clear from my data and from others that parent-child communication in absentia
is increasing thanks to cell phones. And this communication, most common in the form of
texting or calling, does not always have to be one-sided. In helping to expand the realm of
parenting as previously discussed, the cell phone has actually opened up the parenting
arena for more two-sided negotiations, and has given more of a voice to many teenagers. In
the face of smartphone culture, traditional forms of relationships [are] breaking down and
being replaced by more reflexive1, and often more democratic interactions between parents
and teens (Williams, 2005, p. 315).
Like Isabelle, who keeps tabs on her father via GPS tracking devices, many other
teenagers have gained more of a say in parental negotiations thanks to smartphones and
smartphone culture. One anonymous parent in my study uses an app called Life360, a
tracking device that tracks both parents and children alike, making all of their locations
available to everyone logged into the system. Its nice to know that in an instant, I can find
out where my kids are, says the parent, although acknowledging that the device does not
see much regular use.
The experiences of Beth Cooney, mother of two high schools students in grades 9 and 12,
highlight this increase in negotiation. Here she discusses her relationship with her children
as compared to the one she had with her parents as a teenager herself:

1 Reflexive refers to social theorist Ulrich Becks theory of reflexive modernity, which describes the way
in which questions of the development and employment of technologies are overshadowed by questions
of the potential political and economic risks of their use.

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There is much more negotiation going on over the phone--why cant I go here, why
do I have to come home, can I go to Tommys, I can do my homework later, etc.-versus a more cut and dry conversation with my parents--Im going out, be back for
dinner. Often my parents were busy when I got home from being away all day, and
we never talked about the who/what/when/where/why.
Now, even busy parents can find a few seconds to text their children, a much less
time-consuming process than having conversations face-to-face. And discussions of the
who/what/where/when/why allow children to assert their own opinions, with sometimes
fruitful results. Using data gathered from the parents in my study whose teenage children
attempt to re-negotiate curfews via cell phone, I found that these requests are granted an
average of 56% of the time.
This newly paved two-way street asserts itself most prominently by expanding social
independence--specifically by giving teenagers more freedom to negotiate and extend
curfews and whereabouts once theyve already left the home. My data certainly
corroborates this: only 38% of the parents in my study said they had any means of renegotiating curfews with their parents once theyd already left the house when they were
teens. 81% of the high school students in my study, however, could do so via cell phone.
Additionally, the parents that could negotiate after leaving the home used pay phones and
landline phones at friends houses--means of communication that restricted them to be at a
certain place at a certain time, and let their parents know with almost absolute certainty that
they were indeed where they told them theyd be. Smartphones in some cases make
checking in at home almost redundant, and thereby give teens more time and freedom to
structure their days. In todays technological world, fewer children have curfews at all: 79%

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of the parents in my study had a curfew when they were in high school, but only 64% of
them assign curfews to their children today.

**Here is a graph of data collected from my study, corresponding to a question that asked Do/did you have
a means of re-negotiating your curfew with your parents once youd already left the house?

Urban teens in my mothers generation could never negotiate a curfew with their
parents via text while already on the train to a friends house. They couldnt text their
parents to let them know theyd be home a little late after school, the way I do all the time.
So while its true that teens these days are held more accountable for their whereabouts
because it is now so easy to provide them, its also true that they have a little more leeway
in negotiating said whereabouts thanks to the same smartphone technology that could reign
them in if so abused.
Its not just redefined times for negotiation that increase urban teenagers social
independence. Whether teenagers have smartphones can often hold significant influence
over the decisions their parents make regarding their social life, especially when it comes to
travel. According to my study, 77% of parents said they felt that their child was safer if s/he

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had a cell phone. And 88% said theyd be more likely to let their teens travel to unfamiliar
places if equipped with one.
In fact, most parents are aware of the impact smartphone use has on their teens
social independence. Although 33% of the parents in my study reported no correlation
between their child having a cell phone and their freedom to travel and stay out late, 48%
observed some sort of increase in that freedom, whether slight (31%) or significant (17%).
Only 19% indicated a decrease in freedom--these are the parents who tend to wind their
tethers more tightly.

**This data was taken from my study, from a question posed to parents.
Mother Beth Cooney has also observed an increase in social independence thanks
to cell phones: We have allowed him to go downtown to the movies at night or across town
to visit friends on the [subway], she says of her 9th grade son. As long as we have check-

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ins via phone occasionally, I am okay with it. I dont know if I could say the same if he didnt
have a phone.
By increasing teenagers ability to travel and stay out late in the absence of their
parents, and by letting them have more of a voice in parental interactions, smartphones and
smartphone culture can actually help to speed up the emancipation process of
adolescence--that is, the stage where teens break free from parental authority and try to
find their own sense of independence. A lot of this emancipation comes also from the vast
other world social media unlocks that is often hidden from parents--the direct access to
teenagers peers.

Thinking Independently
According to a studyvi conducted by researchers Stefania Kalogeraki and Marina
Papadaki from the University of Crete in Greece, the mobile phone enforc[es] the role of
peers in their socialization processes and play[s] a pivotal role in teens emancipation from
the parental home during the crucial developmental period of adolescence. It is almost an
icon through which one can show others that they have achieved an independence from
their parents and are quickly becoming adults, writes Richard Ling, a Norwegian sociologist
quoted in their paper.
Ling is, of course, referring to the wide world of social media, so often misunderstood
by parents. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, even Instagram (a picture sharing app), help
teenagers voice their opinions and activities to their friends, and, more importantly, help
transmit the opinions and activities of others across the country, across the globe. On social
media, most teenagers can escape the grasp and influence of their parents. This plays a
huge role in developing teenagers worldviews regardless of those held by their parents.
The process of learning to think independently of ones parents is something that has in

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past generations been most commonly experienced in the transition to college, where teens
are exposed to a more diverse range of people accompanied by diverse thoughts. But now,
they scroll through an online portal of diversity (depending on who they follow), almost
every day. They gain mindset-expanding exposure to myriad opinions.
78% of the high school students in my study reported that social media has exposed
them to ideas, opinions, or viewpoints that differ from those of their parents. And most of
them enthusiastically explained that social media has in fact extended their viewpoints
beyond those of their parents, a strong indicator of an increase in the thinking side of
social independence.
An example of this comes from high school senior Rakabe A., whose parents
immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia. Bringing with them their home countrys
strong Christian background, Rakabes parents (and most other Ethiopians she knows both
here and in Ethiopia), raised her in a religious household that was not very tolerant of
homosexuality. Her parents, says Rakabe, are anti-gay, but not necessarily homophobic.
Although they still want us to treat everyone the same and be good Christians, when it
comes to LGBTQ issues, they just dont get it.
As a result of this, Rakabe grew up underst[anding] being gay to be against the
Bible and nature. But when she started getting into social media around 7th grade, her
views about this changed. Honestly, social media outlets like Facebook have helped me
see that it comes down to a person is a person, and we have the same rights. I don't think I
would've been able to say this if I never joined social media, especially at the age that I did,
she explains.
Rakabes experiences mirror those of hundreds of other teens, urban, suburban and
rural alike. Especially when it comes to political views, children have historically grown up
inculcated by the ideas that persisted in their immediate community--the opinions of their

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parents, their teachers and coaches, the peer pressure of their friends. Social media, by
contrast, provides the kind of online exposure that can shift the way teens think.
On social media such as Tumblr and Twitter, I've seen the points of view of
strangers of different demographics from me and my friends who are blogging or tweeting
about their perspectives and changing my opinion from what it otherwise would be, says
Alice L., another senior in the study. She explains that she always knows her parents
opinions on a topic--if she asks them, they will tell her--and she takes into account their
opinions and the information she gets online while deciding what she herself should believe.
Often my ideas based on what I see online from people of a number of different
demographics (but all about the same generation--my generation or up to 15 years older)
extend beyond what my parents appear to take into account when they give their opinion on
a current event, she says, pointing to her parents relative lack of knowledge regarding
issues of social justice.
Yet another student, senior Anton X., says social media has expanded his critical
thinking skills. I have access to a vast array of resources for learning about different
people's opinions on various topics ranging from women's rights to communism, he says,
explaining how he actively tries to learn more about these topics when they are mentioned
by reading extra articles.
Social media provides a virtual niche for almost everyone, including such online
spaces as online forums, support groups, and blogs targeted at specific types of people.
Having all of these resources available aids the teenage emancipation process by helping
teens shape who they are as a person in a sphere not occupied by parental influence. This
notion is supported by research from Harvard professor Howard Gardner and his thenstudent Katie Davis, who explored social medias impact on teenagers identity formation. In
their book, The App Generation: How Todays Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and

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Imagination in a Digital World, they argue that, if used the right way, apps can promote a
strong sense of identityvii. While teenagers with this new technological tool might not
necessarily be more independent people in the years after physically leaving the home,
smartphone culture speeds up the process by which they can explore who they are, and
thus acts as another booster to social independence.
Peer pressure and cyber bullying do exist on social media as well, and these things
can distort teenagers sense of self. Looking, however, through the specific lens of parentchild relationships, almost all social media interaction helps teenagers form a worldview
independent of (though not necessarily different from) their parents. Cyber bulying and its
effects on identity formation is an important issue, but it is not a corollary between parentchild relationships and relative social independence.
Papadaki and Kalogerakis theory of the mobile phones dual role viii when it comes
to teenage independence encapsulates the take-aways of my research. The smartphone
and the tether that comes with it defy the spacial boundaries commonly assigned to
parenting interactions, and most often lead to more constant parental involvement and
communication. In many cases, this extends social independence by developing a more
conversational approach to parenting, where the teen now has a voice. Coupled with the
advent of social media, independence is increased yet more. But certain parenting styles
use the tether to restrict independence by over-monitoring their teenagers. As Williams and
Williams conclude in their studyix, the tether and its power to restrict is the price teens pay
for the leeway in negotiations it brings them. The tether, they say, is the vital bargaining
chip.
The majority of teenagers who participated in my study gained an increase in social
independence thanks to cell phones. Other studies, however, indicate this is not always the

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case. I interviewed almost entirely urban teenagers, whose lifestyle grants them a larger
degree of freedom to begin with, and this differentiates my study slightly from those that
were conducted on a national scale. At Boston Latin School, which 90% of the study
participants attend, most students take public transportation to and from school, and most of
them have been since they were as young as 12 years old. Suburban children, by contrast,
must be driven to most social events by adults until they are old enough to get their drivers
license. And even then, they dont always have access to cars. Thus, city kids stand more to
gain from negotiating with their parents on the go.
Additionally, parents who raise teenagers in an urban setting historically have
sheltered them less than suburban or rural parents do. Most of the parents in my study said
they got their teen a phone in the first place so they could take public transportation by
themselves, an act which some suburban parents, particularly in my own experience, view
as dangerous. A suburban or rural teenager who is sheltered more by his/her parents, and
who stands less to gain from cell phone communication in the absence of things like public
transportation, may view parent-child smartphone interactions as invasive as they usually
result in a tightening of the tether. But for urban teens, the smartphone is much less
restrictive than it is freeing. For urban teens, smartphone culture increases social
independence.

Academic Independence

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The smartphone era has ushered in numerous opportunities to integrate technology2

into academics, and schools are taking advantage of them. Many high schools in the
Boston area have implemented online grading systems, where students--and their parents-can check their scores for assignments as soon as they are graded. The Boston Public
Schools uses a website called the Student Information System (SIS), around which I based
the portions of my study pertaining to academics.
The ability of parents to check their teenagers grades online leads to increased parental
involvement with academics. At the very least, parents these days know more about their
childrens academic lives than parents in previous generations ever have. Parents in my
study indicated that they are aware of their teens overall academic standing an average of
87% of the time, whereas their own parents were only as informed an average of 55% of
the time.
67% of the parents in my study regularly check SIS for their childrens grades, and
48% have a notification system set in place that emails them whenever their child receives
a grade on an assignment that lies below a predetermined acceptable level. Among the
parents in my study, these levels ranged from 75% to 90%, with 80% being the most
common. This means that the bulk of these parents are emailed if their kids receive a grade
of 79% on something as insignificant (as far as term grades are concerned) as a homework
assignment or a daily quiz. Often on smaller assignments, a student can receive around a
79% by getting merely one question wrong.
But does increased parental involvement mean that students, in turn, rely on their
parents more for help in managing their academics? Does over-involved parenting cut into

Although academic technology is not limited to smartphones, and most often is not utilized on them, the
technology itself still plays into aspects of smartphone culture like instant gratification and expanding time and space
for communication.

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academic independence? I set out to answer this question by asking students and parents
about how often they turned to their parents for help with homework, focusing on major
assignments such as essays, projects, and applications.
According to my research, the students whose parents checked SIS more often
tended to go to their parents for help on a larger percentage of major assignments. This
data drew from only student responses--students were asked how often their parents
checked SIS to their knowledge, which does leave room for error. Nevertheless, there was
some correlation, although other factors must be taken into consideration which might
complicate that, such as language barriers to homework help and lack of access to the
internet.

**The above graph is a compilation of data collected from two different questions posed to high school students in my
study, which are reproduced in the graphs title. For the first question, about how often their parents check SIS,

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students chose from 5 options: never, rarely, sometimes, often, and daily. For the second question, students wrote in
percentages, which ranged from 0-60%. I broke 60 up into five relatively equal ranges based on the numbers
students gave in their responses. I then graphed the two questions on the same graph, with the x-values serving
double roles for the categories pertaining to each question. Answers to the two different questions got very similar
numbers of responses in the same category--for instance, 68 students had parents who never checked SIS, and 58
students only asked for help on 0-10% of major assignments. This led me to believe that the less frequently a parent
checks SIS, the less their child will turn to them for homework help. Major assignments were defined as papers,
projects, applications, etc.

Interestingly, students in high school today only asked for help from their parents
slightly more often than did high school students a generation before them. (The latter data
was taken from a question posed to parents in the study reflecting on their high school
years; the former, from the high school students in the study.) This can be explained by the
fact that there are parents who are more involved than others in every generation, even in a
time when being an involved parent was harder, academically speaking. So while students
who indicated that their parents checked SIS every day may be more likely to rely on them
academically, just because SIS makes keeping up with academics easier for parents
doesnt mean that there are more overly-involved parents or the resultant dependent
students than there were years ago.
Some of my research suggests that academically-involved parenting may do more to
satisfy parents own desires to feel involved than it actually does to assist their children
academically, whether this contributes to academic dependence or not. Says high school
senior Anton X., I don't feel that giving my parents access to my online grades is helpful for
me at all, but it might make them feel as though they have more control and make them
more comfortable.

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

22

In fact, most of the high school students in my study reported that their parents use
of SIS, and their parents involvement with academics in general, has little to no effect on
their academic performance. Its important to bear in mind however, that almost all of the
students who participated in my study attend a highly selective exam school which forces
them to take greater responsibility in managing their academics. For students at other
schools that apply less pressure, having involved parents might well influence students to
rely on them more for guidance.
And there are Boston Latin students whose experiences back that up as well.
Despite the fact that the majority of students academic performance is unaffected by their
parents for the most part, some still use their parents knowledge of their academics as
something of a crutch. Regarding her parents discussions of her online grades, senior
Rakabe A. reflects, As annoying as these conversations get, the talks and my parents just
knowing my grades all the time really help drive me. I already think myself as a hard worker,
but having extra pressure helps me stay on track. Rakabe is not alone: another high school
senior at the school finds his parents access to SIS helpful. They remind me of deadlines,
he says. An eleventh grader remarks, [Online grading systems are] slightly helpful in the
long run because [they] give me another pair of eyes monitoring the assignment grades
coming in and responding to how I appear to be doing in each class.
The parents I interviewed helped explain how parents utilize the information they
glean from online grading systems. One mother of a daughter in high school reports that
she discusses with her daughter what she needs to talk to her teachers about. More than
once weve found an error in the data entry (like an incorrect grade for a test) or a missing
quiz/homework, she explains, although she doesnt contact her daughters teachers directly
unless she is asked to. This mother finds that her daughter asks her for help with schoolrelated work more than she asked her own parents as a high schooler, but the types of

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

23

things she helps her with most often include time-management, setting deadlines, and
helping her keep track. She deems most of this necessary by the fact that her daughter has
way too much homework. On occasion, if her daughter has a bad teacher, she and her
husband make up for the less-than-stellar instruction by helping her with her studies as
well.
Many parents of this generation play a more active role in their teens academics,
with which SIS helps them. If this parent is always on top of her daughters academic
management, her daughter might be more likely to depend on her for more of the guidance
she provides. If she sees a missing test on SIS, she might go to her mother first before
approaching her teacher. But it is also evident that she is better-off academically thanks to
her ability to rely on her mother. In high school, this type of dependence seems beneficial-its just a question of what age is appropriate to wean teenagers off of it.
This trend, though, really only applies to teens with parents who are capable of
helping their students with schoolwork, who tend to come mainly from the ranks of higher
socioeconomic standings. The parent above mentioned that her husband has an advanced
degree, which helps him assist his daughter with her academics. For highly educated
parents who actively utilize things like SIS, this type of dependence is much more common.
Other teens, as in past generations, fend more so for themselves.
It was no surprise to me that the majority of the high school students in my study
didnt like that their parents had instantaneous access to their grades. Of the students who
had an opinion of whether their parents access to SIS was helpful or hurtful--and the
majority didnt, either playing the I dont know card, or indicating that their parents didnt
check it--71% found parental access to SIS hurtful. Students used words like overmanage, focusing mostly on the extra pressure that comes from parents who might be
informed about the letter of the grades, but dont understand the weighting of the

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

24

assignments and overlook the fact that grades fluctuate before the marking period officially
closes.
These complaints, however, also point to the fact that parents are cutting into
academic independence. They are putting pressure on their children to succeed thanks to
information they find using technology. This behavior, though exacerbated surely by
smartphone culture, is not new to this generation of parents and teenagers. And just
because a parent is being overbearing doesnt necessarily mean that his/her child is relying
on them more as a result. So, while parents sometimes are not letting their teens function
on their own, these teens are not necessarily unable to do so if given the chance.
What Ive observed overall is that, although parents may apply pressure to their
teenagers more thanks to SIS, students dont become dependent on their parents for help
with actual academic work as much as they rely on them for the little things, like being
organized, staying on top of deadlines, and coordinating with teachers. Parents might force
their children to meet with a tutor, for example, or in some drastic cases to do extra
homework at home in an effort to improve their grades, but in most cases this doesnt cause
students grades to depend upon the efforts of their parents as much as it scares them into
compliance with parental expectations. In some cases, Id imagine that the same student
wouldnt perform as well without that parent-imposed tutor (a kind of dependence on his
parents), but for the most part, as long as the pressure to make a certain grade persists, I
dont think he would rely on his parents methods of sustaining it--hed work somehow to
attain it himself. For the small things, though, its an easy trap to fall into to rely on ones
parents to manage the minutia. Ive certainly fallen for it myself.
Whether or not todays teens are relying more on their parents for help, though,
smartphone culture may not be to blame. When asked why she micro-managed her
daughters academics more than her parents had done for her, a mother in my study

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

25

explained, I think its because the stakes for college are so much higher--college is so
expensive, and competitive--and because education is a core value for us, so we think its
worth spending time on. This example gives light to the fact that different parenting styles,
and different values held by different parents, can be a marker for independence as well.
And smartphone culture is definitely not the only big change in the academic life of todays
teens--the entire academic process itself is changing. Naturally, trends like dependence
cannot be explained solely by one cause.
As with most things, there is a balance that must be struck in order to produce
academically-independent teenagers. A little parent involvement can definitely be a good
thing, if it means better grades and a less stressful high school experience. Time
management is a useful skill, and teens must learn it somewhere--why not from their
parents? In fact, according to a study conducted by the Southwest Educational
Development Laboratory, students with involved parents (regardless of income or
background) are more likely to earn higher grades and test scores, pass classes and
graduate from high school, and even have better behavior and social skills x. But theres a
fine line between being just the right amount of helpful, and being too helpful. As
smartphone culture has allowed parents to more easily be involved with so many spheres of
their teenagers lives, that balance has become harder to find.

Extended Adolescence
Encroachments upon both social and, to a lesser extent, academic independence
have contributed to an extension of adolescence. That is, teenagers rely on their parents
for direct help or indirect guidance for a much larger period of time than they have in
previous generations. In fact, child psychologists in the United Kingdom recently redefined

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

26

the age upon which an adolescent is deemed mature, or a psychological adult, extending
it from 18 to 25 years oldxi. This was based mostly on neurological findings. But
smartphones, believe it or not, play a role in extended adolescence as well.
In previous generations, when teenagers graduated from high school and moved away for
college, they officially embraced the title of adult. Most of them living away from home
communicated with their parents less frequently and thus relied on them less for help
balancing the little things in their daily lives, like making social and/or academic decisions
and managing their time. But the smartphone era removes some of the boundaries that
once surrounded this more literal form of emancipation. Now, teens in college communicate
much more frequently with their parents; 97% of the college students who participated in my
study indicated that they communicate with their parents a few times a week or more. Only
42% of the parents in my study who attended college, however, indicated that they
communicated with their own parents this often during their college years.

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

27

**Data collected from my study.

College students these days are using cell phones to ask their parents advice or
help with regards to schoolwork. Of the college students in my study, a plurality of 38% of
them shared academic information with their parents every few weeks, via technological
communication. Close behind were a few times a week (21%) and every few months (28%).
Not one out of the 68 college student participants indicated that they never shared
academic information with their parents--the closest I came to a negative answer was one
student who said that s/he had nothing to share except that Im enjoying my classes,
which is itself an academic update. 34% of college students also indicated that they used
their cell phones or other forms of technology to ask their parents for help or advice with
regard to schoolwork. Here, a few times a week won a majority, this time of 58%.
Compared to the parents in my study, of whom many expressed that their parents
never had an awareness of their academic standing while in college (49% of parents
parents had such an awareness less than 10% of the time--with the answer 0% accounting
for the second highest frequency of responses), this marks an extension in the period of
time in teenagers lives that their parents are involved in their academics.
Researchers like Clark have called this extended adolescence, linking it to
smartphone culture concepts like that of the tether xii. But is this necessarily a bad thing? In
terms of independence, maybe. Although, in todays wounded economy and competitive job
market, smartphone culture may not be the only thing that keeps this tether alive into the
later years of adolescence, especially when it comes to finances. As Clark herself told me
via email, the economy is actually having a greater effect on our ideas about independence
than are mobiles. She goes on to explain, Young people are more dependent on their
parents because the cost of living overreaches the income that a young person in their 20s

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

28

can earn. So, [...] they are often moving from fully dependent to somewhat dependent to
interdependent (Clark, L., personal communication, January 28, 2015).
The extended tether may also be a good thing for family relationships. 69% of the
college students in my study feel that having a cell phone enables them to be closer to their
parents than they imagined they would be in a time before cell phones. This closeness
despite physical boundaries connects with what Clark meant by interdependent in the
quotation above. Parents increasingly rely on their children for emotional support, she
explained in our interview (Clark, L. personal communication, January 28, 2015). And
smartphone culture lets them maintain closeness even as they move apart, so they are
better able to do so. According to professor Howard Gardner, this closeness also feeds into
the extended adolescence trend. I personally believe that the connectedness that kids
have with their families does extend adolescence, he told me in an interview via email on
January 13, 2015.
Regardless of what happens when teens approach their 20s, though, my research
suggests that some teens are dependent on their parents through their college years. Says
one parent in my study, I know of a woman whose son went off to college on the West
Coast--geographically about as far away as you can get. First night alone he texted her--it's
roast beef or chicken for dinner, what should I have? The same parent also told a story of a
friend of hers who works as a professor at Dartmouth College. During his office hours, a
dissatisfied student arrived to discuss a contested grade, and simply handed him a cell
phone with her parents on the other line: here, talk to my mom.
While I didnt notice such overwhelming dependence among the college-age
subjects of my own study, cell phones and smartphone culture do enable this behavior,
which marks a trend that will be interesting to analyze as these teenagers approach their
30s. Especially once teens reach the college age, though, they have much more of a say as

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

29

to how tightly parents wind the tether. The students from the above scenarios could
technically have made their own dinner choices, or negotiated with their professors
themselves; on the other hand, a teenager in high school would be forced to update their
parents or come home at a certain time, for example. Parents need to be sensitive to how
much the offspring wants to extend the adolescence and whether that is a good or bad
thing, says Gardner. To take just one example, continuing to live at home can either be
very comfortable for all parties concerned (as in many European countries), or a constant
source of friction (Gardner, H., personal communication, January 13, 2015).

Conclusions

One thing my study has proven is that the more involved a parent is with their
teenagers day-to-day lives, the more that teenager will come to expect their parent to be a
part of day-to-day decisions. This is a major contributor to dependence, to whatever degree
it exists. My results as to whether independence--social and academic--increased or
decreased varied according to parenting style. What Ive come to realize is that its
impossible to say that smartphone culture is directly responsible for much on its own.
Smartphone culture simply makes room for different parenting styles to exist, some of which
are new to this generation of parents. And parents, in turn, make use of smartphone culture
in shaping teenagers, in launching them to have stable and independent adulthoods. As
Howard Gardner told me, Apps will not remake human nature (Gardner, H., personal
communication, January 13, 2015). It is up to humans to utilize those apps in the most
advantageous way--the tether can be established with just enough tautness so as to make
for teenagers who are perfectly independent in managing social and academic issues.

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

30

That said, there was one exception: social media. Regardless of parenting style,
teens in my study who used social media were able to increase their social independence
from their parents by forming a more independent manner of critical thinking that relies less
on parental influence. I predict that as social media expands in generations to come, the
notion of thinking the way you were raised to think will be replaced by a more well-rounded
thought process, and a worldview that will be defined more so by the generation and/or
demographic that a person belongs to than where and with whom s/he grew up.
Overall, I dont think that smartphone culture represents anything detrimental to my
generation. Although we may take a little longer to reach independence than our parents
did, we will be equipped to deal with the responsibilities of being an adult whenever we
finally get there. After all, the helping hand of a parent isnt always a bad thing.
I think independence is coming to mean something different than it did perhaps 20
or 30 years ago, Lynn Schofield Clark told me, referring to the two-way street smartphone
culture comes to represent as children get older and parents turn to them for support (Clark,
L., personal communication, January 28, 2015). As for what that means as my generation
fully comes of age, well just have to wait and see.

How Communication Technology Affects Teenage Independence

31

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Endnotes

33

i Clark, L. S. (2013). The parent app: understanding families in the digital age. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
ii Williams, S. and Williams, L. (2005), Space invaders: the negotiation of teenage boundaries
through the mobile phone. The Sociological Review, 53: 314331. doi: 10.1111/j.1467954X.2005.00516.x
iii Clark, L. S. (2013). The parent app: understanding families in the digital age. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
iv Anderson, J. Q. (2012). Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives.
Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life Project.
v Clark, L. S. (2013). The parent app: understanding families in the digital age. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
vi Kalogeraki, S., Papadaki, M. (2010). The impact of mobile use on teenagers socialization.
International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. 5(4) pp.121-134.
vii Gardner, H., & Davis, R. (2013). The app generation: How todays youth navigate identity,
intimacy, and imagination in a digital world. New Haven: Yale University Press.
viii Kalogeraki, S., Papadaki, M. (2010). The impact of mobile use on teenagers socialization.
International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. 5(4) pp.121-134.
ix Williams, S. and Williams, L. (2005), Space invaders: the negotiation of teenage boundaries
through the mobile phone. The Sociological Review, 53: 314331. doi: 10.1111/j.1467954X.2005.00516.x
x Center for Public Education. (2011). Back to School: How Parent Involvement Affects Student
Achievement. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Publiceducation/Parent-Involvement/Parent-Involvement.html
xi Mientka, M. (2013). Adulthood extended to age 25 by child psychologists in UK. Medical Daily.
Retrieved from http://www.medicaldaily.com/adulthood-extended-age-25-child-psychologists-uk257835
xii Clark, L. S. (2013). The parent app: understanding families in the digital age. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.