Pew mobile Internet study: Parenting changes with childhood mobile saturation
Pew mobile Internet study says 25 percent of teens access the Internet through mobile devices and that the mobile platform is closing the digital gap between lower- and middle-income families. Parents need to begin watching their kids' backs, not look over their shoulders.
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Mobile digital divide narrower
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Anne Collier is editor of NetFamilyNews.org and co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a Web-based interactive forum and information site for teens, parents, educators, and everybody interested in the impact of the social Web on youth and vice versa. She lives in Northern California and has two sons.
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Pew found that teens in “lower-income and lower-education households are still less likely to use the Internet” – mobile or wired – but they are “just as likely and in some cases more likely than those living in higher income and more highly educated households” to be cell-mostly with their Internet access.
So we might extrapolate that the mobile platform is narrowing the digital divide in the US the way it is between developed and developing countries.
Here are some digital-divide data points:
- 89 percent of teens living in households earning under $30,000 per year use the Internet, compared to ...
- 99 percent of teens in households earning $75,000+ per year.
- 30 percent of teens in households earning under $30,000 per year are cell-mostly Net users, compared with ...
- 14 percent of teens in households earning $50,000-74,999 per year and ...
- 24 percent living in households earning $75,000+ per year (the last three points probably indicate the most free-flowing access on any and all devices).
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*We probably need more research on what the right conditions are for children to develop their internal guidance system in the digital age, but we have plenty on child development, at-risk youth, and parenting – and a diversity of perspectives on moral development. But I suspect that most children have reasonably useful external conditions and largely unacknowledged inner resources for healthy, meaningful participation in community online and offline.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family andparenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employedor directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Anne Collier blogs at NetFamilyNews.org.
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