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 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 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 Cell phone as “Swiss Army Knife” Changing Media Ecology of Children— Less enslaved to “appointment” media? Culture of cut ‘n’ paste learning

Amanda Lenhart Research Specialist (202)