who specializes in family communication

On computer and cellphone screens in workplaces across the country, many young employees keep up daylong conversations with their parents, sharing what the weather is like, what they ate for lunch or what the boss just said about their work.

The running chatter with Mom or Dad is possible for young adults in their 20s and early 30s because they are the first generation to hit the workforce with tech-savvy parents. Most baby boomers are using the same smartphones, tablets and laptops as their children, making daily communication with Mom easier and more open-ended than ever.

Chatting, or texting, is a subtler way to stay in touch from a cubicle than a phone call. As long as the computer's sound effects are on mute, samsung cases,chatting is silent. It is as simple as opening a Web application such as Google Hangout (the chat interface is known as "Gchat"), Facebook or iChat—all free—and selecting someone from a list of online contacts. In most applications, a chat window will pop up on screen. Depending on where you work and how far away from the boss you sit, you may choose to minimize or hide it.

Before he and his mother started chatting, Mr. Embry often wasn't able to talk when she called him on the phone at work. Her regular missed calls to his cellphone were a source of frustration for both. One day, Mr. Embry saw his mother's name among his Gchat contacts, because she was one of his frequent email contacts and she had logged in to check her Gmail account. He sent her a chat message suggesting that they try online chatting instead of the phone.

Family therapists say it's important to establish boundaries. Mothers who feel the urge to chat too often are probably transferring their own anxieties onto their adult children. "If you feel like there's a bug in your ear, then it's too much," says Karen Ruskin, a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Sharon, Mass., who specializes in family communication. She says the frequency and intensity of texts and chatting with parents is a common issue among 20-somethings and their families.

Dr. Ruskin encourages young adults to engage their parents in a conversation—preferably on the phone or in person—about ways to keep in touch that work for both of them. As a last resort, she says, the young adult might agree to check in by chat or text with a parent a set number of times a week, limiting messaging at other times.

Messaging—instead of calling—their parents makes sense since, as a group, millennials aren't big on talking on the phone. In recent years, customers in their 20s and 30s have gravitated to prepaid wireless plans offering minimal voice minutes but unlimited texting and data, cellphone-service providers say.

Fathers, of course, text and chat with their adult children. But most of millennials' workplace chatting seems to occur with their mothers. Among boomers, mothers are still more likely than fathers either not to work or to work part-time, says Meg Jay, a Charlottesville, Va., clinical psychologist and author of "The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now." Combined with women's tendency to be more verbal and relationship-oriented than men, Dr. Jay says, "all that adds up to more chatting."

Joyce Snyder, 55, who lives in Clarksville, Pa., uses different strategies for checking in with each of her two adult children. She is friends on Facebook with her daughter, Stephanie, a 25-year-old multimedia developer at Kent State University in Ohio, and typically reaches her via Facebook chat. If she wants to reach her son, James, a 22-year-old investment assistant in Pittsburgh, she'll send a text. "I kind of know when to back off," she says. Mr. Snyder says he figures his mother initiates their chats 80% to 90% of the time.

During breaks at her restaurant job in Kennewick, Wash., Cassaundra Excell, 20, often texts her mother, to share jokes and photos and even talk philosophy.

Sometimes, Ms. Excell texts her mother about an issue with a friend or co-worker that is unfolding in real time. "I'll text her, 'So-and-so is mean to me, or doesn't like me,' or 'I'm stressed about this,' " she says. In those cases, her mother, Tamra Excell, 41, an administrator at a private online school who lives in Benton City, Wash., says she tries to act as a "sounding board" to help her daughter identify possible courses of action.
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