Digital location tracking in the parent/caregiver-college student dyad.

INTRODUCTION: As college students navigate new developmental milestones, many families rely on digital technology to stay connected and aid in the transition to adulthood. Digital location tracking apps allow for parental monitoring in new ways that may have implications for youth development. Although recent research has begun to examine prevalence and motivations for digital location tracking in adolescence, we know little about how and why families continue to track into the transition to college, and how this may relate to perceptions of helicopter and autonomy supportive parenting. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study of 706 community college and 4-year university students in the Southeastern United States, we describe prevalence and sociodemographic differences in parent/caregiver digital location tracking of their college student children, and how this may be associated with perceptions of helicopter parenting and parent/caregiver autonomy support. RESULTS: Findings suggest that digital location tracking is a fairly common practice among college students, with nearly half of the sample endorsing currently or previously being digitally location tracked by their parent/caregiver. Younger, White, and higher socioeconomic status students were more likely to be tracked. Those students who were currently being digitally location tracked tended to perceive their primary parent/caregiver as engaging in more helicopter parenting and as less supportive of their autonomy. CONCLUSIONS: This brief report provides preliminary insight into parent/caregiver digital location tracking of their college student children. It is our hope that future research will further examine how digital location tracking may be helping or hindering attainment of developmental milestones in the digital age.

Dyadic parent-college student digital interaction styles.

Parents and their emerging adult children are highly connected via mobile phones in the digital age. This digital connection has potential implications for the development of autonomy and sustained parent-child relatedness across the course of emerging adulthood. The present study uses the qualitatively coded content of nearly 30,000 U.S. parent-college student text messages, exchanged by 238 college students and their mothers and fathers over the course of 2 weeks, to identify distinct dyadic parent-emerging adult digital interaction styles across dimensions of responsiveness and monitoring. Results reveal that digital interaction styles are largely consistent across age, gender, and parent education as well as reflective (i.e., texting patterns of parents and emerging adults mirror one another), with little evidence of overparenting profiles. Results also show that those college students who are reciprocally disengaged in text messaging with their parents perceive their parents as less digitally supportive. However, no styles were associated with perceived parental pressure to digitally engage. Findings suggest that the mobile phone is likely a valuable tool to maintain connection with few risks for undermining the privacy and autonomy of emerging adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Emerging adults' digital technology engagement and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Within the past decade, parents, scientists, and policy makers have sought to understand how digital technology engagement may exacerbate or ameliorate young people's mental health symptoms, a concern that has intensified amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous research has been far from conclusive, and a lack of research consensus may stem in part from widely varying measurement strategies (including subjective and objective measurement) around digital technology engagement. In a cross-sectional study of 323 university students, the present study seeks to understand the ways in which youth engagement with digital technology - across subjective and objective measurements, weekday and weekend distinctions, and social and non-social uses - is associated with mental health (as measured by depression, loneliness, and multidimensional mood and anxiety). The present study also tested a differential susceptibility hypothesis to examine whether COVID-19 related social isolation might exacerbate the potential harms or helps of digital technology engagement. Results yielded few observed associations between digital technology engagement and mental health, with little evidence of detrimental effects of observed or perceived time spent on digital technology. Rather, those significant findings which did emerge underscore potential protections conferred by social connections with friends (both online and offline), and that the loneliest students may be the most likely to be reaching out for these types of connections. It is important that the field move beyond crude (largely self-reported) measures of screen time to instead understand how and to what effect youth are using digital technologies, especially during the social corridor of emerging adulthood.