Adolescents’ and Parents’ Assessment of Each Other’s Attitudes About Appropriate Mobile Phone Use

Adolescents (11-14 years) and their parents (N = 52 dyads) rated the appropriateness of mobile phone use by either an adolescent or parent during family dinner time, at a party, or while doing homework or work and predicted each other's ratings of phone use appropriateness. Adolescent and parent groups generally did not differ in their mean ratings of mobile phone use appropriateness, but both adolescents and parents expected that the other groups' ratings would differ from their own. Also, adolescents expected parents' attitudes about mobile phone use to be more negative than parents' actual attitudes, while parents expected adolescents' attitudes to be more positive than they actually were. Parents' predictions of their adolescents' ratings were positively associated with their adolescents' actual ratings, but adolescents' predictions of their parents' ratings were not related to their parents' actual ratings.