Use of Digital Technologies and Social Media and the Social Relationships of Teenagers

Abstract

Polish pedagogical and psychological literature as well as mass media more and more often in-form about disorders of competences and social relations of teenagers, as a result of abuse of digitaltechnologies, especially smartphones. The authors analysed 31 cases of patients with cyberabuseand addictions at the Social Prevention Centre in terms of the occurrence, intensity and character ofthe disappearance of their real social contacts, as well as their behaviour in small natural peer groups.The obtained results were compared with 49 groups of adults and parents of patients. Researchbased on participatory observation and in-depth interviews showed that teenagers devote over 62%less time to personal social relations than their parents, their time of real social relations with parentsis about 38 minutes per day, create atomistic attitudes towards family (e.g. refusal to participate incommon meals), have shallow and narrow groups of friends, and prefer borrowed contacts (throughsocial media). The average declared number of teenagers’ friends in social media exceeds 540, whiletheir parents use smartphones in less than 140. Young respondents use smartphones in almost ev-ery social and life context (e.g. in toilets, in church, at school, during meals). The research confirmedthe occurrence of digital technology abuse. The article ends with preventive delegations.