Parental Attitudes towards Children’s Internet Use
and Online Advertising in Hong Kong
Keywords: parental attitudes – children – Internet use – online advertising
Dr. Kara Chan
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Studies
Hong Kong Baptist University
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 3411 7836 Fax: (852) 2339 7890
Email:
Fei Shen
M. Phil. Student
School of Communication
Hong Kong Baptist University
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 3411 5160 Fax: (852) 2339 7890
Email:
Paper presented at the 2004 Third Annual Hawaii International Conference on Social Science
June 15-19, 2004
Abstract
The rocketing growth of new media technology, especially the Internet, brought up a “digital generation”, which both excites and worries their parents. However, parents’ perception and attitudes toward children’s Internet use has seldom been investigated, especially in countries with Asian culture background. Like their counterparts in western countries, Chinese parents hold both positive and negative attitudes toward children’s Internet use and online advertising. A survey of 367 Chinese parents was conducted to examine parental attitudes of their children’s Internet use and online advertising in November 2003 in Hong Kong. Eleven statements were used to measure parental attitudes toward children’s Internet use and five statements were used to measure their attitudes toward online advertising. A factor analysis was conducted to examine the dimensions of parental attitudes and a correlation analysis was conducted to investigate the relationship among parental attitudes, demographic factors and their computer and Internet literacy. Results showed that Chinese parents mostly worried that Internet use would hurt their children’s eyesight. They also concerned about the pornographic and violent content, and the chance to meet with immoral people online. Parents generally held negative attitudes toward online advertising. Parental attitudes varied among different demographic groups. Those parents with higher computer and Internet literacy were more likely to hold positive attitude toward Internet. The implications for public policy and for the design of the technology were discussed. (225 words)
Introduction
Children and youth are generally quick learners and passionate adopters of the Internet for various goals such as communication, entertainment or education. They tend to regard the Internet as a flexible and multi-function medium. Research has identified several motives for children’s Internet use: affinity with computers, information, entertainment, boredom avoidance, online social interaction, and off-line social interaction (Valkenburg & Soeters, 2001). The widespread availability and use of the Internet has opened up to children a fantastic world of information and experience that parents of previous generations can hardly understand or cope with. Considerable attention and concerns are now focusing on children and Internet, because as the first 'the digital generation’ they are in the vanguard of new communication technologies, yet also vulnerable to the risks associated with it (Livingstone, 2003).
Hong Kong is a metropolitan region in Asia where Internet household penetration is one of the highest in the world at around 60 percent (Census and Statistics Department, 2003). Users are most likely to be younger and better educated. Among 10-14-year-olds, 90 percent reported using the Internet, a figure almost double (49%) that of adults between 35-44 years of age (Census and Statistics Department, 2002).
Although children seem to be mostly enjoying their digital experiences with the World Wide Web, there are dangers, both real and potential. According to the research literature, there are three categories of online danger (Turow, 1999; UCLA, 2001; Williams, 2002): (1) exposure to improper content, (2) the incidence of exploitative and dangerous contacts, and (3) issues of privacy, advertising and commercialism.
Corresponding to these dangers, parental concerns center on their children’s Internet use, particularly in relation to values, commercialism, privacy and, above all, sexual material (Livingstone, 2002). Pornography on the Internet has been especially troublesome. In late 2003, one research firm estimated "there were over 1.3 million sites serving up about 260 million pages of erotic content" (Legon, 2003).
Illegal downloads have also become a concern for parents, as various countries and organizations begin to crackdown on offenders. In early 2003, The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed 532 lawsuits against individuals who shared songs using programs like Kazaa (Evangelista and Hoge, 2003). Some of the actual penalties and fines were listed in the millions of dollars (although most expect the suits will be settled for far less), and some of the defendants were as young as 14 years old (Levy, 2003).
Thus, the body of literature on parental concerns of children’s Internet use is growing. Although most of the published research has been conducted in western countries (Livingstone & Bober, 2003; Lenhart, Rainie & Lewis, 2001), the issue is increasingly global. The parent organization for the RIAA, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has filed suits against 247 individuals in Italy, Germany, Denmark, and Canada (Ma, 2004). An IFPI spokesperson in Hong Kong remarked that legal actions would be coming to Asia as well.
Parental concern about children’s use of media can reflect both personal and cultural differences. As a former British colony for one hundred fifty years, Hong Kong culture has been depicted as a combination of East and West. The Eastern emphasis on collectivism and filial piety has played an important role in the patterns of child training (Ho Kang, 1984; Yang, 1989), as well as the Western emphasis on individualism and self-identity. Thus it is worthwhile to investigate parental concern about this issue, and link it to parents’ and children’s demographic characteristics within in a Chinese culture background.
It is suggested by previous research that parental attitudes toward the Internet are not stratified by education or income but rather depend on prior experience with the Internet (Lohr & Meyer, 1999). This evidence suggests that the “digital divide” is an influential independent variable, reflecting parents’ proficiency and knowledge of computers and the Internet. This influence is linked to parental notions about positive and negative attitudes toward children’s Internet use. Based on these concerns, a number of research questions are posed. First, this study seeks to establish cross-cultural comparisons between East and West regarding perceived danger.
RQ1: Do parental attitudes in Hong Kong reflect similar concern areas of Internet danger, namely, harm, immoral, and edutainment as those being reported in the Western societies?
This question will address whether the fears or dangers associated with the Internet transcend cultural differences, and reflect aspects of the universal human condition. A second research area would be to generate a predictive model for understanding the interaction between various independent variables and parental attitudes toward the Internet, expressed as:
RQ2: What are the factors that influence parental attitudes toward the Internet?
A third area of inquiry is to examine differences within groups of parents to identify interaction effects. For example, the variable of age may reveal significant differences. Younger parents and those with less experienced in computer and internet use may indicate greater concern or fear for their children's safety than parents who are older and more experienced. In other words:
H1: Younger parents will be more concerned about their children than older parents.
Rationale: Younger parents tend to be more concerned about making mistakes; older parents tend to be more reflective and even more permissive (especially in multiple-child families).
Finally, in terms of the severity of the dangers online, parents will probably have some concerns that outweigh others. We expected that the greatest concern would be for those dangers involving physical and emotional harm to children, in contrast to those involving things or possessions. In other words:
H2: Sexual and violent content will be more of a concern to parents than illegal downloads.
Methodology
Sample
This study used a non-probability sample for data collection. From October to November 2003, students of a public university in Hong Kong distributed a structured, close-ended paper questionnaire in Chinese through personal contacts to friends with children 6-19 years old. A total of 367 questionnaires were distributed and collected from Hong Kong Chinese parents with children (children being defined as between the ages of 6-19). Any questionnaire collected that had less than half of the questions completed was considered unusable. Also, respondents who did not have a child within the specified age range were deemed unusable. This resulted in a total of 354 usable questionnaires and a response rate of 96 per cent.
The sample profile is summarized in Table 1.
[TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]
Two thirds of the samples were mothers and the reminding one third were fathers. About eighty percent of the respondents were aged 30-49 and more than eighty percent had at least secondary school education. The median household income of the sample was HKD$20,000 per month (around US$ 32,000 annually), which was marginally higher than the official median household income in Hong Kong (around US $28,800 annually)(Census and Statistics Department, 2001).
Considering that using the Internet involves higher degrees of intellectual and physical maturity, the target population for the study was parents with children aged between 6-19 years. Regardless of whether additional children were out of this age range, responses were included as long as a child fell within the specified range.
Questionnaire
The questionnaire was based on a previous research on family communication and parental mediation of television use in Mainland China (Chan & McNeal, 2002). The draft questionnaire was pre-tested with five parents and the wordings were revised to fit the Hong Kong context. These Likert scale items (5 points; 1= strongly disagree, 5= strongly agree) were used to measure parental attitudes and their self-reported computer and Internet literacy. Demographic variables including gender, age, education, occupation, household income, number and age range of children in the family were collected.
Measures
Parental attitudes toward the Internet were measured by eleven statements, of which two were positive items and nine were negative ones. Negative statements reflected parental concerns about potential harm that might arise from Internet use. These concerns included the impact on children's academic performance, exposure to improper content such as pornography or violence, downloading pirated content, online gambling and encountering bad people online. The two positive statements reflected benefits derived from the Internet in terms of information and entertainment. Respondents were also asked to rate in a five-point scale (1= strongly disagree, 5= strongly agree) their own computer and Internet literacy, using two statements. These two items were subjected to reliability analysis and produced a reliability coefficient of α=.95.
Results
Descriptive findings
Overall, Hong Kong parents recognize there are positive and negative aspects to the world of the Internet.
[TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE]
The item indicating greatest concern was “Spending a lot of time online will hurt children’s eyesight.” More than 90 percent of the parents reported they were worried about this occurrence. The second highest concern was regarding pornographic material online. Three-quarter (76 per cent) of the sample worried about sexual content in Internet. Conversely, the positive aspect of finding valuable information online was endorsed by 74 percent of the parents. The items receiving the lowest degree of concern was online gambling and illegal downloading. Result of pair-wise t-test indicated that Hong Kong parents’ worry about online pornography was higher than worry about children’s illegal download (t=13.3, df=353, p<0.001). Also, Hong Kong parents’ worry about the violent content was higher than worry about children’s illegal download (t=11.3,df=353, p<0.001). As a result, H2 was supported
Factor Analysis
A principal components factor analysis was employed, resulting in three significant identifiable factors. One item, “Indulging in the Internet will lessen the interpersonal communication of the child” did not load on any factor and was removed from analysis. Subsequent factor analysis identified three factors accounting for 61 percent of overall sample variance.
[TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE]
Three factors were labeled as “Harm”, “Illegal issues”, and “Edutainment” respectively. The factor “Harm” consisted of five items. These items were “chance of meet immoral strangers when chatting”, “affect children’s study”, “porn content”, “violent content” and “eyesight hurt”. The second factor labeled “Illegal issues” consisted of three items, namely, “pirate files”, “copyright problems” and “gambling”. The third factor “Edutainment” consisted of two items. These two statements reflected the perceived information and entertainment function of the Internet.
The items were aggregated into three indices reflecting concerns in these three areas.
Correlation analyses
The bivariate correlation between parental attitudes toward children’s Internet use and demographic factors identified some significant relationships, as presented in Table 4.
[TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE]
The age of the parent was negatively linked with Edutainment (r=-.10, p< .01). Older parents were less likely to appreciate the benefits of Internet use of their children. Age of the parent had no significant correlation with perceived “Harm” and “Illegal issues”. In other words, younger parents and older parents were equally concerned about their children’s safety in Internet use. As a result, H1 was not supported.
The most influential variable on parental attitude toward children’s Internet use was parents’ computer and Internet literacy. This variable was significantly related to all three attitudes factors. The relationship was negative regarding Harm (r= -.13, p<. 01), and positive with Illegal issue (r= .15, p< .001), and Edutainment (r= .23, p< .001).
Parents with higher level of computer and internet literacy were more likely to concern about illegal issues, more likely to appreciate the benefits of Internet to the children, and less worry about harmful consequences of Internet. Education level was positively related with Illegal issue (r=. 13, p<. 01) and Edutainment (r= .16, p<. 001). Significant negative correlations were revealed for child’s age and Harm (r= -.11, p<. 01) and illegal issue (r= -.11, p<. 01). Parents with younger children demonstrated greater worry about harmful effect as well as illegal issue. Household income was correlated with Illegal issue positively (r=. 12, p<. 01).
Discussion & Conclusion
This study investigated parental attitudes toward the Internet as a new media technology that their children commonly use. The data revealed that Chinese parents have mixed and contradictory feelings toward the Internet. These results mirror the findings of Pew Internet & American Life Project (Lenhart et al., 2001), and suggest the Internet is a microcosm of the struggle faced by parents. The pressure to let children "find their way in the world" is directly at odds with the parental instinct to protect them from harm. These contradictory pressures can lead to externalized conflict between the parents and children (Livingstone & Bober, 2003), as the parents struggle between holding on and letting go.