Outcome of Parental Social Media Usage on the Family Bond: A case of Families at Mavuno Churches in Nairobi County ,Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the outcome of parental social media usage on the family bond, perspectives of families at Mavuno churches in Nairobi County, Kenya. It specifically sought to identify the social media sites that families in Mavuno churches used, establish the amount of time spent on social media and establish the bonding factors affected by social media usage. Attachment theory guided the study. The study adopted a descriptive research design and the target population was 1401 Christian parents attending Mavuno churches in Nairobi. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 102 respondents. Questionnaires were used in data collection, which were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and inferential statistics (Correlation) statistics. The study established that all the respondents used WhatsApp, 96.7% used Facebook, 93.3% used YouTube, and 66.7% used Twitter. The findings further indicated that 80(88.9%) of the respondents accessed SM sites more than five times a day and in every single SM visit, 43(47.8%) of the respondents spent twenty minutes, 23(25.6%) spent at least one hour, 19(21.1%) spent less than ten minutes, while 5(5.6%) spent at least two hours. Similarly,54(60%) of the parents stated that social networking sites took away their face-to-face socialization time with their family, 30(33.3%) acknowledged that use of social media affects communication with family members, and 41(55.5%) stated that use of social media denied them time to bond with their family members, while 46(51%) posited that use of social media affected personal relationships with family members. The study concluded that social media use among parents of Mavuno churches was very high and this may lead to addictive effects which may seriously affect family unity. Given that excessive social media use may weaken the family bond, family members need to join forces to address this by committing to set and respect boundaries regarding social media use in the family, creating fun family time, and having a written down gadget use policy in the house that every family member is familiar with.