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89% of online teens say the internet and other devices in their lives like cell phones, iPods, and digital cameras make their lives easier, while 71% of their parents say these technologies make their lives easier. A majority of parents with online teens still believe the internet is a beneficial factor in their children’s lives, there has been a decrease since 2004 in the number of parents who believe the internet is a good thing for their children.
At the same time, there has not been a corresponding increase in the percentage of parents who think the internet has been a bad thing for their children. Instead, more parents are neutral about whether their children have been positively affected by the internet, saying the internet has not had an effect on their child one way or another.
The majority of parents (64%) and teens (60%) own two or three gadgets; family members living in the same household also tend to own the same number of gadgets. However, in many cases, these parent-child pairs do not own the same devices. Cell phones are the most widely-owned device among parents, followed by desktop computers. Among teens, desktop computers are the most widely-owned devices, followed by cell phones. Two-thirds of desktop-owning parents (64%) have children who also own desktop computers and 60% of parents who own cell phones have children who own them as well. This is not the case for the other gadgets which we asked about in this survey.
This difference is most pronounced with iPods and other MP3 playing devices, the one technological device that teens are more likely to own than their parents. Over half of teens (51%) report owning an iPod or MP3 playing device compared with 29% of parents, and yet 22% of parents who own iPods or similar devices live with children who also own a digital music-playing device. This data suggest that parents who own more sophisticated and costly technology devices such as PDAs and laptops do not tend to give those same gadgets to their children. Rather than benefiting from a “hand-me-down” program, teens who own sophisticated gadgets have convinced their parents to buy these gadgets for them or have earned money to purchase these devices for themselves. As in 2004, internet use among parents with teenagers correlates directly with income. Of parents who live in households earning more than $75,000 a year, 98% report that they use the internet. At the lowest end of the household income spectrum (people who earn $30,000 or less), 60% of parents report that they go online. Parents who have higher levels of education and larger household incomes are more likely to have a computer (either a laptop or a desktop) than parents who have less education and lower incomes, and they are also more likely to own smaller gadgets such as PDAs and iPods than parents who are not as well-educated and do not earn as much money. Parents of online teens are more likely to own gadgets than parents of teens who are not online (especially desktop computers, laptops, and iPods/MP3 players). White parents are more likely to report using the internet than black parents. Fully 88% of white parents say they use the internet at least occasionally, compared with 72% of black parents. Hispanic parents who speak English fall in between white and black parents, with 84% saying that they use the internet at least occasionally. Of the parents that use the internet, there are no statistically significant differences in terms of frequency of use according to race. |
