From tradition to screen: The transformation of family value transmission processes in the digital age

Values are transmitted from family to child not through explicit instruction but within the ordinary flow of everyday life and, more often than not, without words, which renders this transmission at once durable and fragile. This study examines how value transmission has been transformed by digitalization through the narratives of a transitional generation that spent its childhood within traditional patterns of settlement and relationships yet carries out its parenting in a digitalized environment. Within an interpretive phenomenological design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 parents living in Afyonkarahisar, and the data were analyzed thematically. In childhood narratives, transmission operated without recourse to words, through the gaze, example, and shared space. The entry of digital media into the home fragmented this shared time-space, and children’s capacity to verify their parents instantly brought the family’s relative monopoly over knowledge to an end. Authority has not disappeared; rather, its legitimacy has shifted from threat and fear to persuasion and negotiation. Privacy has emerged as a new domain of value which, when read through the lens of contextual integrity, operates as a local order woven from gendered visibility and religious-moral references. Narrative-level comparison shows that traditional and negotiated elements coexist within individual narratives, including those of the youngest and oldest participants. While the family has lost its epistemic authority, it retains its moral authority; the process thus amounts to a restructuring rather than a dissolution.