Digitally Connected Kids - Survey Report

Kids characteristic in accessing digital media are quite different than previous generation. As a digital native, today kids are getting familiar with any kind of digital devices. When it comes to the possession of gadget, we come to the some considerations of how “connected” we want our kids to be? Jakpat conduct a survey regarding this issue by asking parents about their experience on their digitally connected kids. We ask 202 respondents in the age of 19-45 years old in nationwide scale. The confidence level of this survey is 95%. All respondents involved in the survey are parents with kids in various ages.

When we talk about the possession of gadget, our respondents answer that they allow their kids to have their own gadget at 3-6 years old. Most of them possess tablet or smartphone as the type of gadget.

Before having their own gadget, kids were happy to play with parents’ gadget. It is a ubiquitous to see kids playing their parents’ gadget for any reasons. Our respondents acknowledge that their kids start to use their gadget mostly at the age of 1-3 years old. Comparing this finding with our previous data, it is clear that playing with gadget unconsciously become kids own nature.

Although in fact parents are most likely to give gadget to their kids at 3-6 years old, their perception regarding the ideal age of having gadget is even much older. Most of parents feel more comfortable in giving kids a gadget when they already at the middle school, while only 33% of them at kindergarten.

As Dads and Moms tend to have different pattern of parenting, we also ask about their habit in giving gadget to the kids. It is not surprising that Dads tend to be more generous than Moms in giving gadget to their kids. Dads are also more likely to upgrade their kids’ gadget on special occasions. When it comes to the reason of giving gadget, Moms consider that it will be easier for them to communicate with their kids, while Dads tend to give gadget for the sake of supporting their kids learning activities.

Surprisingly, we also find an interesting insight regarding Dads reason of giving gadget to their kids. Since Dads are tend to be quite generous about giving gadget, they acknowledged that following the current trend also become their motives. Dads would love to give their kids the latest gadget so that their kids always stay in trend. Although this motive seems quite impulsive, but this finding shows some part of father’s effort to spoil their kids.

We heard a lot about kids who get in any kind of troubles regarding their digital habit. We also ask parents about the risk of kids having gadget they are mostly concern about. The first issue they are extremely concern about is having gadget may disturb kids attentions to school. The second issue is access to porn. Cybercrime become the third issue they concern. Besides that, dating and communicate with strangers also become their worries.

In order to relieve parents’ worries, almost all of our respondents acknowledge that they lay down some rules on how their kids use the gadget. The most popular rule is only allowing their kids to use gadget on break time and after school. Parents also have different rules for weekdays and weekend. Surprisingly, 15% Dads even have rules for their kids on downloading applications.

In order to protect and control their kids, parents also do some checking to their kids’ gadget. They ensure their kids do not communicate with strangers by checking the contact list, as well as reading the SMS and instant messaging. Moreover, they also know their kids social media password so that they can check their kids’ digital friendship.

However, even though this is more than half of respondents, it is only 77% parents who surely believe that their kids are using the gadget wisely.

This survey gives us a clear idea regarding parents’ today habit in giving digital gadget to their kids and how they want their kids to be “connected”. We can simply summarize that although parents give gadget to their kids in a quite early age, they still control their kids by laying down some rules and actively checking their kids’ gadget. Moreover, for mobile phone industry, this research also give an insight regarding the different motives of Dads and Moms on giving gadget to the kids. Therefore, mobile phone industry players are able to target their consumer segmentation more precisely.

For more detail you can download XLS report at the button below. JAKPAT report consists of 3 parts which are 1) Respondent Profile, 2) Crosstabulation for each question and 3) Raw Data. Respondent profile shows you demographic profiles ( gender,age range, location by province, and monthly spending). Cross tabulation enables you to define different demographic segmentpreference on each answer.