Parental communication to monitor online gaming behavior in the views of teenaged children in Bangkok

Abstract

This research aims to study parents’ communication styles to monitor their children’s online gaming behavior, as well as to study the relations between the parental communication styles and teenagers’ online gaming behavior in Bangkok. The research design is mixed methods approach: qualitative and quantitative research design. The research has used focus group interviews and questionnaire distribution for data collection. The study has found that the most frequent used parental communication style is authoritative parenting, however teenaged children have mostly preferred and expected a permissive parenting style while authoritarian parenting style is their least preferred and expected. The 5 characteristics of children’s unfavorable parental communication are: 1) madly demanding them to stop the play abruptly 2) emotional scolding 3) nitpicking on their game playing 4) showing no confidence in them and 5) always blaming online games. The relationship between teens’ satisfactory level on parental communication styles to monitor their online gaming behavior and their online game addiction scores is negatively correlated and teenagers who are exposed to different parental communication styles, in their views, to monitor their online gaming behavior also show different frequencies in weekly online gaming. Suggestions for policy implications is that school, parents and medical organization should be together build a self-assessment mechanism for parents, and measure their effectiveness regularly and continuously