The Sun-Herald

WHO WE ARE: Using our time nicely

A weekly column about Australia by David Dale, published in The Sun-Herald, 23/12/2007
Since this is the time of year when Santa is double checking his list for niceness or naughtiness, this column should assist by examining what the kids of Australia have been up to lately. It's looking pretty bright.

We know, for example, that most of them saw at the cinema and then bought on DVD four worthy moral fables: Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, Happy Feet, Transformers, and Shrek The Third. That's all nice - those movies carry useful messages about care for the environment, freedom of expression, standing up to bullies, and loyalty to friends and family.

On television, the under-12s largely avoided ads for junk food and junk toys when they got home from school, and instead watched a wholesome array of ABC programs such as Curious George, Tupu, Word Girl, Dinosapien and Bindi The Jungle Girl. On the commercial networks, their favourite was The Simpsons, with its themes of tolerance for diversity and scorn for hypocrisy.

The research organisation Nielsen Online recently released a survey of 500 families which suggests that kids aged six to 17 average this kind of media usage: watching television 9.2 hours a week; listening to music or radio 7.9 hours; studying 6.4 hours; doing sport or exercise 6.3 hours; on the Internet 6 hours; reading books 5 hours; playing video games 4.9 hours; and using the mobile phone 3.2 hours (25 per cent of kids under 11 and 82 per cent of 15-17 year olds own a mobile).

It's on the web that we're at most risk of finding signs of naughtiness. The Bureau of Statistics says 92 per cent of families with children under 15 have Net access, and 68 per cent of families have a broadband connection. Nielsen's "eGeneration Report" found that 78 per cent of kids say they use the Net for homework research, 71 per cent for online games, 60 per cent for email, 51 per cent for entertainment info, and 50 per cent for instant messaging.

Nielsen found the use of email has dropped 11 per cent since 2005. "It appears the commenting and messaging features of social networking sites like MySpace and bebo have overtaken the less interactive and personal nature of email," the report says. "As more and more youth adopt and engage with these interactive and social sites, it will most likely follow that daily use of the internet will increase - as kids will find it necessary to update their online identities frequently and respond to messages from friends with nearly the same timeliness of phone or face-to-face communications."

Should Santa worry that this is getting out of control? Not necessarily. It seems parents are responding to changing media almost as quickly as their offspring. Nielsen reported that 70 per cent of the families surveyed had introduced rules about Net usage, and more than a third of families had installed some form of filtering or monitoring software.

Nielsen also noted that since 2005, "the incidence of Internet connections in a 'secluded' area of the home such as a study or child's bedroom has decreased significantly - office connections and connections in children's bedrooms are both down 11 percentage points to 31 percent and nine percent respectively. Conversely there has been a large increase in the number of connections in 'other' areas of the household such as kitchens and family rooms where online activities can be more closely observed."

Hopefully Santa will bear this in mind when he comes to analysing how nice parents have been this year. Have a good one.

Is the Net a blessing or a curse for young people? Give us your view here

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). His latest book is Soffritto -- A delicious Ligurian memoir. For further observations of Australian attitudes and behaviour, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare/.