Protecting Teens on the Internet

Gaps & Agreement in Perception Between Parents and Children

Presentation to the Casey Journalism Center on Children & Families Conference “The New Generation Gap: Barriers and

Breakthroughs”Amanda Lenhart

March 16, 2005, College Park, MD

Overview

• Pew Internet at the beginning of a multi-stage release of reports on teens 12-17 and the Internet

• Upcoming: Protection of Youth Online

• Other questions we’re analyzing for future releases

Methodology

• Interviewed 1100 parent-child pairs via telephone

• Sample pulled from RDD samples

• Lengthy questionnaire covering a variety of topics

• focus groups

Teen Internet Basics

• 87% of teens 12-17 online

• 80% of parents online

• 66% of all Americans online

• Of 13% who don’t go online, 1 in 10 say that fears, bad experiences, or their parents keep them offline

• Not major reasons

• 47% of offline teens once went online

Protecting Teens Online

• Filtering—54% of families filter

• Public computing location—73%

• House internet rules—64%

• 62% of parents….33% of teens say they/their parents check up on teens after they go online

• Filtering up, others stable

Demographic Differences

• Younger parents & parents of younger teens are more likely to filter/monitor

• African-American and Hispanic parents generally report greater levels of all rules/observational behavior

• Online parents monitor more

Online Behavior: Where Parents and Teens Agree

• 81% of parents and 79% of teens agree that kids are not as careful as they should be about the information they give out online

• 62% of parents and 62% of teens agree that kids do things online that they wouldn’t want their parents to know about

• Overall, most parents believe that the internet is a good thing for their children

Forthcoming Research

• Blogging and content creation

• Intellectual property, copyright & music online

• Cell phones, IM/texting and wireless internet use

• Teens and the digital divide

Story Ideas

• Kids as content creators

• Instant messaging is supplanting email

• Cell phone as “Swiss Army Knife”

• Changing Media Ecology of Children—Less enslaved to “appointment” media?

• Culture of cut ‘n’ paste learning

Amanda LenhartResearch Specialist

alenhart@pewinternet.org(202) 419-4514

http://www.pewinternet.org