Content area
Children's computer use in the home and influences on that use are examined. Long interviews, observations, and surveys with parents and children are used to study computer use and on-line use of children ages nine through fourteen.
In Phase One, seven children are observed while using their home computer. These children and their parents are interviewed about their home media environment and the child's computer use. Phase Two includes two surveys, one of children and one of their parents. Three hundred and ninety children completed the child survey; two hundred and eighty-two parents completed the parent survey.
Children spend an average of 52 minutes per day on the computer. Children with on-line access spend an average of 32 minutes on-line per day. Most of this use is entertainment use, but children also use the computer for information, communication, education, and simplification of tasks.
The child's experiences with the computer, the child's perception of the computer and gender correlate with children's amount of computer use. Children who have difficulty using the computer use the computer less; children who think the computer is more entertaining and more educational use the computer more and nudes use the computer more than females. Other correlations include access to computers and friends and parental computer use.
On-line use correlates with experiences with on-line activities, parental use of on-line, some access variables, and friends talk about on-line use. Gender differences disappear when on-line access is introduced into the home.
Children's computer use correlates with other media use, particularly print media use. Amount of television use does not correlate positively or negatively with computer use. Children's on-line use correlates with audio/visual media use, but no particular audio/visual medium.
Parental views on children's computer use, on-line use and television use differ. Parents are more restrictive and less positive about television use than computer use or on-line use and more restrictive and less positive about children's on-line use than computer use.