Contemporary Parenting: Do Croatian Parents Seek Parenting Advice Using the Internet?

Katarina Dadić, Martina Horvat and Iva Ivanković

Summary:  Contemporary parenting is influenced by rapidly developing technology, easy access to information, and the exchange of ideas through interpersonal digital communication, i.e., the ability to communicate with others via a digital network. Today’s parents are actively involved in the trend of obtaining information from the Internet, thus there is a need to explore the topic from a pedagogical perspective to help develop parents’ competencies. An online survey that included 390 respondents was conducted to investigate parents’ opinions about whether the Internet is a useful source of advice on raising children, with comparisons made between the responses based on parents’ age, level of education, and frequency of visits to social networks. In general, the respondents had slightly positive opinions on the usefulness and applicability of advice on raising children collected via the Internet; however, differences in opinion between respondents with different levels of education were found. In addition, a statistically significant difference was found in the respondents’ confidence in the advice collected from social media based on the frequency with which they visited social media sites.