Summary:
The present master thesis entitled: “Internet use: Parents’ who are Teachers and Adolescents’ Perceptions”, was conducted by Helen Tzavella, postgraduate student of the Postgraduate Program of the Department of Early School Education of National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in collaboration with the Department of Social Administration and Political Science, of the Democritus University of Thrace (specialization : Counseling Psychology), under the supervision of Charalampos Poulopoulos and was completed in January 2018.
The purpose is to reveal the way parents and adolescents perceive and experience the adolescents’ use of the internet. Furthermore, it is considered in which ways these perceptions may converge or diverge. The fields of the inquiry include perceptions about the definition of the internet, perceptions about the use of the internet, positive and negative experiences, adolescents’ motives, parental mediation, ways that affect the adolescents’ character and proposals of manners that internet could be used in school environment. There was conducted qualitative research method and the data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed through the method of content analysis.
There is found that most of the parents and adolescents define the internet as a medium of information and also they both perceive and recognize the importance of internet communication and socialization for adolescents. Concerning adolescents’ negative experiences on the internet there are found fearful emotions for several internet behaviors. Prolonged internet use by adolescents is the most frequently described negative behavior between the participants. Parents seem to feel fearful more than adolescents and the media seem to influence the spread of the specific emotion. Finally, parents’ critical thoughts about the internet use reveal, especially in the research axes of perceptions of the internet use, of the negative experiences and of the internet use proposals in education. Adolescents seem to describe their experiences without adopting spherical, critical thought.
Keywords:
Internet use, adolescence, parents, perceptions