Poster Session 2: The Influence of Technology on Families

Presenters: Katherine Allen, Jessica Resor, France Belanger, Robert Crossler

Summary
Voice-activated smart technologies (Amazon's Alexa) are now embedded within families. How ubiquitous digitalization affects parent-child relationshipsis an emerging frontier for educational intervention and corporate transparency.In this multi-method qualitative study, we conducted three sets of in-depth interviews with parents and their children (12 families; 40 individuals) and an online parental survey.Guided by ecological theory to examine intersections across family microsystems and macrolevel changes, our research question was: How are family interactions and boundaries transformed, both agentically and reactively, in adopting and learning a new smart home technology? Three themes reveal how families adopt Alexa: (a) Alexa increased family communication; (b) children had greater technological knowledge, but parents set boundaries (e.g., unplugged Alexa); (c) families were too busy to research Alexa's privacy and "listening" functions.

Subject Codes: education, parent-child relationships, technology
Population Codes: inclusive of minor children, intergenerational, income inclusive
Method and Approach Codes: grounded theory, qualitative methodology, systems