Survey: How Kids 12 & Under Use Web Technology
Yesterday we posted a video from the Teens in Tech conference, looking at how teens perceive technology. Today we're co-launching a survey which aims to find out how children 12 years and younger use Web technology. We've partnered with Boston research firm Latitude, which developed the survey tool and will help us analyze the data. The survey will be open for 2 weeks, after which ReadWriteWeb and Latitude will list and analyze the results.
If you're the parent of a child 12 and under, then we invite you to participate in the survey by clicking here.
The study is open to all children aged 12 and under. It's important to note that you DO NOT need to reveal the identity of your child. We're super conscious of the privacy issues regarding children on the Web, so you may enter a nickname into the survey instead of your child's real name.
In a nutshell, here's how the survey works. With you (the parent) always at the controls, the survey will ask your child to draw his or her response to a question. There is a special tool for you to upload the resulting drawing, in JPEG format. The survey will then gather some general information about the child's computer use, which should only take 5-10 minutes.
As explained in a background post by Latitude's Kim Gaskins, the survey aims to discover how children use and understand Web technology, the environmental factors that contribute to these understandings, and the extent to which children can think "innovatively" about web technology. The study also intends to deduce real-world applications from the drawings that the kids create.
Click here to begin the survey process.
Latitude is a research-driven consultancy for technology and media companies. It works with clients to discover and develop opportunities for next-generation content, software, and communications technologies through a combination of Web-based applications and innovative research methods. Visit life-connected.com for other Latitude studies, or email ischulte@latd.com to learn more about working with Latitude.
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Interesting idea, how I wish I could encourage my kids to participate in this survey. Lets see, thanks for the link.
Brilliant - will RWW and Latitude be publishing the results so we can download them (for free)?
I don't have children but will share with others. I have watched my nieces and nephews use of technology and it is vastly different from my own experience. This will be an interesting survey and hopefully will also enlighten all of us on how to better incorporate technology into education and to identify ways to translate teen tech use into usable skills for the market place.
Thanks for the very positive feedback!
Yes, Megan, we'll be writing up the results on RWW (and Latitude's site, life-connected.com).
We're using our visual, interactive research tool, Kaleidoscope, for this study, so participants will be able to view others' submissions right away. When the study closes, we hope to open it up for all to view the submitted images. (We're very conscious of privacy, so please regard the notice.)
Yes teens do not use the web it seems for research unless for cut and paste homework. They seem to use if for social and games would like to see the results.
@Linsay:
I'm going to disagree with you there. There are many teenagers that use the internet for educational purposes, myself included. While people such as myself do not compose the majority of teens on the internet, I believe it is important to avoid making such over-generalizations. If this was an oversight, or I misinterpreted your statement, I apologize.
@RWW:
I'll be looking forward to the results.
Also, I'd like to see a similar survey targeted at teenagers as well. It would be even more interesting to juxtapose the teenagers' answers against the parents' answers.
Will the advertisments change languages with the countries they go to and adopt the language?
Coming a bit late to this...hope we can still participate!
We've been on an open ended, non-stop family world tour since 2006 when our trilingual daughter was 5. We LIVE a digital life so perhaps we are pioneering the way of the future!
My daughter takes piano lessons in Spain with a teacher in Chicago, violin lessons with a Russian teacher who lives in North Carolina (who I found on Twitter) (both over Skype webcams& is taking Mandarin now with kids from around the world through John Hopkins University's CTY online program.
At 5 she was interviewed "live" while in Europe by other kids from a Kindergarden class in Boston via Skype and our viral Soultravelers3 Yotube travel videos are popular with homeschoolers & teachers. We also have had thousands of disadvantaged school kids from Harlem, Bronx etc come with us virtually, including "live" talks from different continents!
She loves ebooks & using our home library e-style has been a godsend on our trip since she is a voracious reader. She also uses online resources for homeschool like Brainpop & MIT's Scratch. She even has her own Twitter acount!
YET, we also think kids need to spend most of their time in nature & play, so we strongly restrict "screen" time which does impact a growing brain. We strongly control and educate her about online activity & she does NOT own an ipod, cell phone, wii or Nintendo DS.
Thanks for sharing! This is all really interesting.
It was actually from observing this kind of behavior that we evolved the idea for the study; one of Latitude's team members is originally from the Czech Republic, and her 6 year-old son (who visits the office occasionally) simply logs into Skype and dials his grandma, who's living in the CR currently, whenever he feels like talking to her. She also reads him books remotely, etc.
Additionally, it's nice that you mention the importance of nature and of generally being active. One of our upcoming innovation studies investigates the perceived benefits of being in nature, and attempts to elucidate some opportunities for using digital technologies in augmenting, rather than interfering with, this kind of experience.
I believe that the internet is used by most teens for facebook, twitter, myspace and so forth instead of for research and learning. My kids can bypass firewalls at school and have done so just to do IM and facebook.
In my hypnosis practice the major uses of the web that I found were not constructive. I had many parents bring children to me to break the addiction to porn, facebook and social media addiction. They just could not stop themselves from being online. I finally began teaching hypnosis seminars to help more people learn how to stop any addiction or reform habits.
My own children are addicted to Face book and only use the computer for research when school demands and will cut and paste nearly everything and only change the bare minimum. I feel that twitter and Facebook have become like an online disease to kids and I monitor the time they have on it now.
The major uses of the web that I found were not constructive. Most of the kids time is spent on facebook, myspace and chat functions and very little for research. The learning and research is almost exclusively for school and doing a cut an paste report seems to be the norm at the school.
Children seem to spend the majority of time playing internet games on facebook, and chatting with others. It seems to be a race on how many friends you can accrue instead of as a means of research and learning.
Is this 4 kids? becuz i'm a 10 year pld kid. :/
Kim Gaskins, ur pretty! I'm SUCH a flirt! :)