PERCEPTION AND THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF PARENTS: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS

Communication plays a vital role in any organization. Its significant role as an information and sharing channel between family, education, leisure has become a foundation for socialization and education process that a child goes through from childhood to adulthood. One of the vital elements that helps connect child-parents relationship is social media especially Facebook. Thus, this article discusses the use of Facebook amongst parents to get in touch with their children. Research method use is structured interview with parents who uses Facebook while Nvivo is used to analyse data. Research results revealed a few categories in the use of social websites amongst parents to: follow current development, communicate with family, strengthen relationships, and for work and academic purposes. Generally, the respondents were satisfied with the social website aside from getting current information. In terms of parent-children relationship, some respondents asserted that social media has the potential to be a tool to monitor children’s activities. Results also discuss the implication and suggestion for future research.