Challenges Facing the Digitization of The Saudi Family from Parents' Point of View

(A Descriptive, Exploratory Study)

Abstract

Digitalization has both positive and negative impacts on all social aspects. Families are at the forefront of these impacts. Children's use of digital media technologies, such as smartphones, e-games, and others, is a major challenge for parents due to the risks these technologies pose, including bullying, psychological disorders, sexual harassment, privacy threats, and addiction. The present study aims to identify some of the challenges families face from the viewpoint of parents whose children are aged 4 to 15 years. The researcher employed a descriptive method through an exploratory questionnaire on a sample of 206 individuals: 49 fathers and 157 mothers. The results found that between 55% and 97% of the sample reported facing several challenges related to the digitization of the family, namely: their children spending a lot of time online/using digital devices to the degree of addiction; worrying that children may learn about negative behaviors such as self-harm, lose appetite, and become exposed to a lot of information online; believing that technology (digitization) is a reason for the fragility of families and that the Internet has forced parents to make undesired conversation with their children in addition to the difficulty of setting limits to regulate children's Internet use. On the other hand, from the parents' point of view, the challenges that children become exposed to pornographic scenes at an inappropriate age and that they discover embarrassing information about parents online had the lowest agreement percentage: 19% and 9%, respectively.