Browsing by Author "Nelson, Justin J., 1981-"
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Item Are we happy now? : assessing the role of electronic technology in family ritual and parental well-being.(2016-02-29) Nelson, Justin J., 1981-; Mencken, Frederick Carson, 1964-The ubiquitous nature of electronic devices today has led to questioning of the unintended consequences of technology on our relationships. Meanwhile, it is widely argued that the family meal can provide a place for regular family interaction. This paper ties these research strands together by examining how the presence of such devices during family meals might be related to the quality of these interactions and, ultimately, affect measures of parental well-being. Using data from the Culture of American Families survey (2011), I find that daily family meals are positive in their relationship to parents reporting to be “very happy” across two measures of well-being. Based on Collins’ (2004) theory of interaction ritual, I argue that parents strongly desire the emotional energy that results from parent-child interactions during the family meal, while my findings suggest that these positive results may be inhibited by the mere presence of electronic devices if this ritual does not take place daily. Thus, in the presence of electronic devices, even regular family meals may not be enough to produce the meaningful interactions that promote well-being.Item Understanding iaddiction : a sociological analysis of technological device addiction and attachment in the digital age.(2019-05-15) Nelson, Justin J., 1981-; Uecker, Jeremy.Technological device addiction is a phenomenon widely described anecdotally but little understood empirically across the broad landscape of American life. In this dissertation, I analyze a nationally-representative sample of U.S. adults in order to: 1) describe the socio-demographic indicators of addiction and attachment to technological devices and explore how rates of daily Internet and social media use are related to feeling addicted and attached to technology, 2) examine how searching for meaning in one’s life (or not) and having a satisfying purpose for one’s life (or not) may influence these self-reported feelings of technological addiction and attachment, 3) examine whether or not those who are addicted or attached to their devices demonstrate measurably different levels of moral and social integration compared to those who are not tech-addicted, and 4) explore how those who are addicted or attached to technology feel about their social lives. The results from these analyses will allow researchers to better understand the social and ethical processes that undergird the complex and growing phenomenon of being addicted to technology.