Social Media in Family Communication of Teenagers - A Focus Group Discussion

Social Media play a very significant role in the life of teenagers, who share their thoughts, dreams and even fantasies with their friends and even strangers whom they meet on line. The word 'Facebook fatigue' has become synonym for jet lag. This has happened in such a way that children started to be more dependent on the social networking media and get away from the family members. The relations online are more important for them than the real relations. This research paper is an attempt to find out the real impact of social media on family communication of teenagers. One of the authors took up a series of focus group discussions of teenagers, parents and grandparents to find out whether the social media play the role of a facilitator or a distracter. The findings reveal that a group of parents are of the opinion that social media do not do any harm to the family interaction. But all the grandparents and a major group of teenagers and a strong minority group of parents were strong in their belief that social media really disturb the family communication patterns.