Connected kids? K-2 children’s use of and understanding of the Internet

Dodge, Autumn M., Husain, Nahid, & Duke, Nell K. (2011). Connected kids? K-2 children’s use of and understanding of the Internet. Language Arts, 89(2), 86-98.

In this interesting study, researchers interviewed 37 children in kindergarten, first, and second grade to determine their awareness of and knowledge about the Internet, and then asked those children to perform various tasks to determine what their level of skill with the Internet was. Data were also gathered from the children’s parents via a questionnaire. This study was important because very little research has been done to date how young children understand and use the Internet. With most states now specifying grade level expectations for digital literacy, educators will soon need to help even young children develop knowledge and skills with the Internet, if they are not already doing so.

The findings of this study indicate that there was a wide range of knowledge and skill levels even among these 37 young children. Some children were already quite “savvy” about the Internet in the early grades, and some had very little knowledge or skill at all. We can only expect such a gap to widen as age increases, unless early intervention is provided. At the top of my consciousness as I read this article was a deep worry that the “digital literacy gap” that Dodge and her colleagues were already noticing in Grades K-2 probably is, like other documented achievement gaps, influenced by socioeconomic level (which is inextricably enmeshed with racial and ethnic group membership in the U.S.). As with the other gaps, those who have more, gain more and ultimately get more than those who have less. Children who have the resources, opportunity, and family support to use the Internet and all it has to offer will be the ones who, when a researcher asks them if they know about the Internet and what it is used for, will provide those answers these researchers coded as “affirmative.” They also will be the ones who can show these researchers that they know how to access and navigate sites on the Internet, and even though using search engines was still beyond the capabilities of most of the children interviewed here, those children who have computers and Internet access at home, and who have parents who spend time introducing the Internet to their children and modeling their own varied, “savvy” Internet behavior are the children who will be most likely to develop Internet searching skills at an early age. Whether the resources and conditions that foster digital literacy are present or not are probably going to be strongly linked to socioeconomic status.

Dodge and colleagues do indeed warn of an emerging digital literacy gap, but they stop short of specifically mentioning any socioeconomic relationship to that gap. I found it telling that the research here was conducted in two suburban schools. The researchers note that 37 children in two schools is not a nationally representative sample, and of course, this study is only an early one and more research is needed about young children’s digital literacies. Still, I wondered why these two suburban schools were chosen, and what the findings would be for a similar study conducted in two inner city schools in the same vicinity as the schools whose findings are reported here. If only two schools could be used as research sites, then why not look at two schools that are at least somewhat different? There probably were reasons of convenience for selecting the two schools here, which I understand completely, but those reasons might have been acknowledged and were not. Without knowing how the schools were chosen, I can’t help but wonder why a more diverse sample was not attempted, even if that sample had to be small and could not be considered nationally representative.

Even though there is a lot more to learn about young children’s digital literacy, this study did produce some interesting findings. One disturbing finding (which the researchers were also disturbed by) was that children often report being on the Internet alone, even though they mostly seem unaware of the various dangers on the Internet, both in terms of the quality and accuracy of information found, and in terms of safety from those who would exploit and harm children using the Internet. Even more seriously, parents’ reports of how much their children used the Internet unsupervised did not match children’s reports in a number of cases. What is going on if even at the age of five, six, or seven, parents are not always aware of what children are doing with the computer? In my own experience in the not so distant past, I often was appalled at the television programs, movies, and video games that the young children I worked with were describing in their conversations with peers at school. I wondered at parents who provided their children with access to these potentially dangerous media, which often were not age-appropriate, and then left those children to absorb all of that input. Now it seems the Internet is added to that dangerous media mix. The dangers now are even more scary because not only are there risks from accessing information, but also the very public nature of the Internet makes communicating much easier but also much more permanent and far-reaching. If children do not understand what the Internet is and how it works, but are sending messages of various kinds on the Internet, the dangers they potentially face boggle the mind.

We need to be vigilant when children access various media, but that does not mean we should shelter them completely from anything that might be harmful or dangerous, even if we could do that (and the research here suggests we can’t). The Internet, and all digital media, are here to stay, are expanding rapidly, and are very much available. Children will need to be able to access and wisely use the Internet, with all of its benefits and all of its dangers. Those who cannot will be disadvantaged. The challenge for us as educators is how to support children and young adults to grow as responsible and discerning users of digital technology. The study here suggests that such support cannot begin too early.