PlayScience recently unveiled a new study showing parents’ perceptions about their child’s technology and media use is heavily influenced by their child’s gender—along with device type and perceived educational value. The study was conducted with a national survey of 501 parents of children between the ages of 2 and 9 years old.
The results were revealed at the 2015 Sandbox Summit at MIT, and included the following:
For parents, gender matters when choosing a digital platform such as smartphone, tablet, kids’ tablet, etc. Parents are three times more likely to give their son a smartphone or video game device, and give their daughter a kid’s tablet (73 percent vs. 65 percent for boys). For girls, child-friendliness is the strongest factor in purchases for parents, while for boys their son’s preference is the primary driver.
Parents are more likely to use tech to manage their sons during notoriously difficult parenting moments, whether that refers to soothing them when upset (48 percent vs. 37 percent for girls) or getting them to bed (42 percent vs. 34 percent).
Tablets, especially ones designed for children, are parent and child darlings, while smartphones lag far behind. Tablets top the list for both parents and kids at all ages, while smartphones rank at the bottom of the list of technology they prefer to use.
Excepts from the study can be found online.
