Social Networking Websites and Family Relationships; Students’ Perceptions

Abstract

This article examines on the one hand whether the remembrance of perceived paternal and maternal rejection affects positively the search for social support on social networking websites and on the other hand to what extent the high quality of a friendship affects the search for social support on these websites. Data were collected from 200 Greek university students and were analyzed with binary logistic regression model which was used to predict the outcome ‘’Search for social support on social networking websites’’. The scores of the following three questionnaires; (α) Perceived parental remembrance of the rejection was estimated via the Short form of the Adult Parental Acceptance and Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) (24 items), (b) The friendship quality was evaluated with the Adult Friendship Questionnaire (AFQ) (27 items), (c) The need to seek support was measured with the questionnaire Attraction to Computer-Mediated Social Support (33 items), were included as predictive variables in this model. Enter method was also used. The final model was able to define 15.6% till 21.4% of the variance, while it was able to successfully predict in total 69.1% of the cases. It has been proved that the increase of friendship quality entails reduction of the possibilities of seeking social support through social networking sites (OR 0.965). Present study is thought to be important because to the best of our knowledge it is the first study that examines students’ perceptions with regard to family relationships and social networking websites