Data Trends: Kids Not Getting the Web Access They Want

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By Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 01/01/2004

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A new study shows that students aged 6 to 17 who have access to the Internet at home are growing more and more dissatisfied with the access to the Net available to them at school. Grunwald Associates, a California market research firm, released the results of their survey, "Children, Families and the Internet," on Dec. 4. Seventy-six percent of students with broadband Internet access at home say that their home connection is faster than their school connection. Even a majority (62 percent) of students who use dial-up modems from home feel that their home connections are about the same or faster than their school connections.

Both students and their parents with home access are also frustrated by how little time kids are allowed to spend online at school. Nearly half of kids online from home (49 percent) and more than a third of their parents (34 percent) say that kids are getting "too little time online" in their schools. This represents a doubling of dissatisfaction on the part of parents of 9–17-year-olds and their children since 2000. In 2000, only 27 percent of 9–17- year-olds thought they were getting too little time online in school, versus 50 percent today, while the percentage of parents of 9–17 year-olds who are dissatisfied with their kids' online time has risen from 17 to 34 percent. These kinds of time restrictions, says the report, are often caused by too many children and staff attempting to use the Net on the same school network at the same time.

It says also that more than 2 million American children—about 10 percent of the 23 million kids with Internet access from home—have their own personal Web sites. This number is a threefold increase since 2000. More information about the study, which targets businesses, is at www.grunwald.com/surveys/cfi/overview.html.