Gone were the days when parents would limit children on their TV time or online browsing. A new study revealed that they are less concerned about it now.
The Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern University created a survey to measure the parents’ perception about technology and how it creates conflicts within the family. The technology mentioned here are the smartphones, tablets, and TV.
Vicky Rideout, co-author of the study and a professor at Northwestern University, and the team surveyed 2,300 parents. The survey has four options: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, and strongly disagree. The question was ‘Does negotiating media use causes conflicts in your home?’
After the consolidation of the responses, the results were as follows: 3 percent strongly agrees, 17 percent somewhat agrees, 46 percent strongly disagrees, and 32 percent somewhat disagrees. Combining the numbers of the ‘disagrees’. It showed that 78 percent of the parents do not unwillingly deny their children of media use, therefore no scenario of begging happens in the house.
The results surprised the team because it was not the usual reaction they hear outside. “We hear time and again about kids demanding more and more media devices and parents struggling to find ways to cope with it,” she told in an interview with The New York Times. “In reality, what we’ve discovered is that most parents of young kids aren’t concerned about media use.”
The details of the media use in the house were also presented in the study: 39 percent of the families use 11 hours per day as media time which includes TV and computer usage; 45 percent has five hours per day; and 16 percent has two hours per day.
Details of the study can be found in the document issued by the university.
