The telephone years : the relationship between adolescent telephone use and parent-adolescent conflict : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University

Abstract

While almost no published research has been completed on adolescent telephone use, it has been found that adolescents report their telephone use to be an area of conflict with their parents Data was collected from 160 adolescent high school students aged around 14 years and some (88) of their parents/caregivers, using a questionnaire designed by the researcher. The results showed that female adolescents had more telephone use and more parent-adolescent conflict than did male adolescents. Both males and parents of both males and females reported that telephone use was strongly related to parent-adolescent conflict, but female adolescents did not report such a relationship. We can conclude that telephone conflict is seen in males, but is only a source of conflict in females as viewed by parents. Further, when males use the telephone it is correlated with the independence they desire, but telephone use has no parallel relationship with independence for females. However, high adolescent telephone use is related to the control a parent would like to have over the telephone, most especially for female telephone users. When females were independent and parents wanted to control their daughters telephone use, conflict levels were high. In contrast, conflict levels were high for parents and their sons when males wanted independence because parents had control of their telephone use.