Internet Usage Among Teens and Parents
A couple of weeks ago, the team at the Pew Internet & American Life Project published a report on Internet and technology usage among parents and their teens. The data is based on a survey of 935 parents and their kids ages 12 to 17 that was conducted in October and November of 2006.
While a year has passed since the original survey was fielded and we all know that technology trends wait for no one (consider the fact that the iPhone wasn't on the market a year ago and Facebook wasn't entertaining valuations of $15 billion), it's interesting data nonetheless. Especially given concerns about kids/teen safety on the Internet.
One of the report's key findings was that parents generally think the Internet has no direct effect at all on their kids. According to Pew, "parents today [note: that would be in 2006] are less likely to say that the Internet has been a good thing for their children than they were in 2004. However, this does not mean there was a corresponding increase in the amount of parents who think the internet has been harmful to their children. Instead, the biggest increase has been in the amount of parents who do not think the Internet has had an effect on their children one way or the other."
Other findings included:
- A majority of parents surveyed (65%) say that they check to see what Web sites their kids have visited.
- 74% of parents know whether or not their teen has ever created a profile on a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook.
- Parents who own devices like PDAs and laptops are more likely to think that the Internet has been a good thing for their children than parents who do not own similiar devices...68% of parents with PDAs or laptops think the Net is good for their kids, compared with 52% of parents who don't own those products.
- Parents are more vigilant about regulating the content their kids see than they are the amount of time their kids spend online...55% say they have rules about how much time children can spend online, but 68% of parents say they have rules about the kind of Internet sites their teenage kids can or cannot visit, as well as rules about what kinds of info their kids can share with people they meet online.
You can download a PDF of the entire report online. Published: October 24, 2007.
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