87% of parents of teenagers are online–that’s 17% more than average adults. And those parents check up on and regulate their teens’ media use, not just in terms of the Internet, but with television and video games as well. Family rules on such media use lean slightly more towards the content of the media rather than the time spent with the media device.
Teens and their parents use the Internet, cell phones, iPods, digital cameras, and other technology devices in a similar way, but teens (89%) are more likely than their parents (71%) to say that this technology made their lives easier.
While a majority of parents with online teens still believe the Internet is a beneficial factor in their children’s lives, there has been a decrease since 2004 in the number of parents who believe the Internet is a good thing for their children. However, there has not been a corresponding increase in parents who think the Internet has been a bad thing for their children; they are simply neutral about whether their children have been positively affected by the internet.
Source: Parent and Teenager Internet Use by Pew/Internet
For related information, you may want to check out the Pew Internet & American Life Project for boatloads of data about who uses the Internet and how.
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These are really interesting statistics when you think about the way kids learn today. Yes, there are a lot of bad things out there to distract students (like social networks), but the church has so many awesome resources that there are a lot of good ways to spend their time too. And I believe we can harness the power of the internet to help get the gospel into their hearts deeper as well!
I recommend http://internetsaftypodcast.com to everyone. Great for computer novices and techies alike, especially parents! Dr. Charles Knutson and Joe Brockbank from BYU explain in easily understandable and direct language the dangers and ways to protect and deal with them.
I’ve never met them, I’m just a fan of their work.