PARENTAL & TEEN BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES ABOUT THE INTERNET

PARENTAL & TEEN BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES ABOUT THE INTERNET

This paper presents survey information about how home usage of the Internet is viewed by parents and teenagers. Concerns and issues about the role of this technology in the home are presented and reviewed. The survey measured beliefs about the protection of children from inappropriate materials, children's privacy issues, filtering and censorship issues, and educational applications. The paper closes with a summary of five parental belief systems to which parents currently subscribe as well as the conclusion that families are handling the addition of this technology into family life with less concern than professionals have regarding this technology.

With the increased availability and affordability of personal computers, many US households now have home-based Internet access. There are now an estimated 135 million users in North America who have access to over 400 million webpages (Nua, 2000). Millions of these users are children and teens. Montgomery (1996) reported that one million children used the Internet for many positive intentions and outcomes.

More recent estimates suggest that 16 million children and teens have Internet access (Jupiter Communications, 1999). These minors will account for $1.3 billion of on-line shopping by 2002. Two of three on-line teens have shopped or purchased on-line already. Children prefer Internet access to traditional television (AOL, 1999). An AOL study of 9 to 17 year old users found that they spend up to 10.6 hours per week on line, with 63% stating that they prefer web time over TV. These same children prefer e-mail over the telephone 55-45% for communicating with others. They also report that they use the Internet for chat rooms, games, e-mail and access to music. Older teens are on-line at least 5 different times per week (Jupiter Communications, 1999).

The topic of how the Internet affects children and families has reached the popular press. Parade, Time, Reader's Digest and Newsweek have all published recent articles. For example, Newsweek (2000) reported on recent worries about the isolationist effect upon web users which can interfere with socialization skills. There are many sides of this issue, from it's too early to tell the long term effects, to the point that the Internet reflects an isolationist society and is an effect not a cause, to the opposite conclusion that e-mail and chat rooms actually increase socializing behavior.

A previous paper explored parental attitudes and beliefs about the Internet and how it is impacting their lives (Sclafani, 1999). Issues reviewed then included protection of children, privacy issues, access to inappropriate materials, educational uses, and parental concerns. This study extends the literature review and presents survey data which update these beliefs and attitudes.

In an Annenberg Public Policy Center (1999) survey of 1102 parents with children aged 8 to 17, it was found that 78% were concerned about their children accessing inappropriate content online. About 50% of parents said that the Internet "interferes with teaching positive values." Further, about 33% of parents reported using some sort of filtering software. The same survey estimated that 6 in 10 homes with children have at least one home computer, with 61% of those homes wired to the Internet.

In a FamilyPC magazine survey (1997) results were obtained from 750 families, all of whom were prescreened and certified users of computers at home. Key findings included the following. Families report an average of 14 hours/week online. Reasons that families have the Internet are: curiosity (26%), entertainment (25%), education (23%), and e-mail access (14%).

Other survey questions yielded the following parental behaviors: 78% "always know" what their child is doing on-line and 55% believe that the Internet has improved their child's education. To avoid offensive materials 73% monitor usage, 26% use a blocking feature from their ISP, and 4% use commercial software. 68% of parents have specific rules for Internet usage; 27% allow their children access to chat; and 68% monitor their child's chat room usage (Family PC, 1997).

There are still mixed reviews about the role of the Internet in improving individual performance in school. While many people believe that the mere introduction of such technology should lead to improvements, this in fact is not the case. Schmitt & Slonaker (1996) have reported on California state test results, specifically comparing a control group of schools to a select group of 25 technology-enhanced schools. The schools which had a major infusion of money to purchase great amounts of computer equipment did not fare significantly better than those with children taught with less technological assistance. The exception to this overall pattern of results was found among low-income students, who did profit from exposure to the increased amount of technology-supported teaching. Schmitt & Slonaker (1996) also list several reasons why it has been difficult to accurately measure the impact of increased technology in the classroom. These include: 1) a lack of a "critical mass" of computers in the schools; 2) inadequate teacher training in ways to incorporate these tools in the classroom; 3) having students prefer the high tech methods and then refusing to go back to older methods when they must; and 4) a lack of designing in the area of cost-effective planning regarding how technology will be added into the curricular mix.

A Market Data Retrieval (1999) survey (with a 35% return of 86,000 schools surveyed) found that about 85% of US schools have the Internet, but only 14% of teachers use it in teaching. In the 1997-98 academic year, 44% of all individual classrooms were wired, and there was a 20:1 student to computer ratio. The survey cited a lack of training of teachers and a teacher worry about computer failures as prime reasons for the lack of application.

According to a survey by the Children's Partnership (1998), schools are struggling with providing access to all students, especially those from lower income families. In their survey, they found that 78% of US public schools had some Internet access, 63% of schools with a "large percentage of poor students" had access, 88% of schools with a "large percentage of high income students" had access, and 27% of all US public school classrooms had Internet access.

Households with computers by annual income level were reported as follows: 19% with less than $20,000, 39% earning $20,000 - 39,999, 58% earning $40,000 - 59,999, and 68% of families with an annual income over $60,000.

Subjects

Subjects were 22 teens (8 female, 14 male) and one of their parents (17 mothers, 5 fathers). The average age of the females was 14.4 years; for the males 13.5 years. The average parent age was 45.1 years, with reported average family incomes of $70,000. The subjects were recruited through a private parochial school and a religious education class in the Tampa, FL area.

Method

A letter was distributed prior to the survey to notify families of the purposes of this research and to ask for their cooperation and participation. 105 surveys were distributed; 22 useable (complete) returns were received after having been brought home and sent back to the schools. The teen survey took about 20 minutes to complete. The parent survey took about 40 minutes to complete. An instruction sheet allowed parents to help their teens if they needed assistance to complete the survey. Teens were encouraged to complete the surveys alone; they returned them in sealed envelopes to protect the privacy of their responses. Both teen and parent survey forms had open-ended and forced choice items, with some item overlap for comparison purposes.

Results

Results for structured survey questions about how the Internet is used at home, how using the Internet has affected other daily activities, how school-related areas have changed (better, same or worse) since having Internet access at home, and how important it was to block or control access to specific content areas are contained in Tables 1-4, respectively (available from author).

Open ended questions were asked of parents and teens. The questions and the responses by theme are presented next. In answer to the item, "Describe what you actually do in terms of supervision or monitoring," parents' themed responses included putting on parental controls, walk-in monitoring, use of filtering software, and prohibition of access to chat rooms and other specific sites. Teen responses to this item mentioned that parents did nothing, they checked up on the teen, and they used parental controls and filtering software.

When asked to list the three greatest benefits/ positive outcomes of the Internet for children, parental responses included uses for school research, increasing reading and writing skills, enhanced communication with long-distance family and friends, general information access, improved schoolwork, and exposure and experience with computers. Teen responses were for entertainment, research, learning, communication, chats with friends and families, shopping, and teaching of technology.

When asked to list the three greatest risks/ negative outcomes of the Internet for children, parental responses included exposure to inappropriate and unsavory material, exposure to unsavory individuals through chat rooms, security risks from releasing personal data, the lack of any rules and regulations online, spending too much time online and not on other more healthy activities, exposure to misinformation, and possible isolationist outcomes. Teens listed such items as viruses, "bad" e-mail, access to inappropriate materials, exposure to sexual predators and pedophiles, and less time to spend with other people face-to-face.

Asked about their knowledge and/or use of blocking software, parents reported interest in finding out more information, they expressed satisfaction about those software programs they had used, and some cited a lack of need since they trusted their children to keep away from inappropriate materials.

In response to the item, "How useful is the Internet with schoolwork?" answers from parents ranged from minimal, to not so useful without adult direction, to very much so as a great research/ information source. One parent stated that it's only helpful if you know how to use it. Another said its use was very limited for daily assignments, but good for papers. Teens cited the access to information for school assignments and papers.

Asked to name specific uses of the Internet in schools parents reported such activities as gathering information for school projects, "e-pen pals" in other countries, and integrating access in all areas of the curriculum. Teen responses were similar.

Asked about what consequences there would be for their teen if they view inappropriate materials, parents offered grounding, loss of computer privileges, lecturing on why their behavior was wrong, fully discussing the matter to process what was viewed, send the teen to counseling if the behavior was repeated, and installing blocking software or not allow unmonitored future usage.

Discussion

The intent of this survey was to begin a systematic exploration of how families are perceiving the impact of the Internet on their lives. As can be seen from the survey data, both parents and children have integrated this technology into their daily lives with little problem. In Table 1, one notes some discrepancies in what teens reported their online activities to be relative to parental perceptions of their child's usage. This is seen in the difference scores on percent use for school (parents reported 25% of the time, teens reported 13.5%), and in shopping (0% vs 8.5%).

Also of interest was the fact that, by report, having the Internet at home has not significantly changed the amounts of time spent on other usual activities. As shown in Table 2, most activities were performed at the "same" level with the exception of television, which 2 of 3 teens reported spending less time watching. There is an apparent trade off of TV time for Internet time. This finding bears out previous findings on this topic.

As shown in Table 3, no teen reported that their school performance, grades or attitude toward school was worse for having the Internet. There was total parental agreement with 38% of parents reporting additionally that the Internet actually enhanced their child's school performance.

It is clear that many parents have high hopes for the Internet in their children's lives. It is equally true that there are many concerns and questions about the dangers and negatives of this tool. As shown in Table 4, parents are wanting to be able to shield their children from inappropriate or dangerous website content. "Very important" was how 2 of 3 parents reported their priority to block such content as pornography, hate groups, drug materials and weapon and bomb information. Those answering "not important" reported that they trusted their teen to avoid such sites and had no need for blocking.

At this time, there continue to be five belief systems that seem to cover the range of parental attitudes. These are: 1) the Internet as a home-based grand encyclopedia; an information treasure to help with school, home and work projects; 2) the Internet as a technology tool with possible good and bad outcomes -- a new way to communicate, to shop, to do business, to be creative; 3) Internet as a "super tech TV" electronic babysitter and source of entertainment; 4) the Internet as a source of temptation and an entryway to inappropriate or dangerous connections - gambling, pornography, hate groups, drug culture material; and 5) the Internet as an unknown - a super technology with many possibilities not yet imagined with many parents uneducated about its use and misuse. Future research will delineate these variables further, as well as additional information about parental behavior.

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