HKU Bulletin

The Generation Gap in the Digital Age

Children today are 'digital natives' and far more savvy about computers and the Internet than their parents. That can put parents at a disadvantage when computer use gets out of hand.

Hong Kong is an affluent city where more than 90 per cent of families with a child have a computer at home. And yet computer and Internet skills within families can be very uneven. Children can easily spend hours online while their parents peer over their shoulder and wonder if this is a good thing.

Dr Wong Yu-cheung, Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, has found the divide is particularly sharp among families in Hong Kong where parents have lower education levels.
About half of parents with junior secondary education or below in his study had never used a computer.

“If parents don’t know how to use a computer and the Internet and how to supervise their children’s use, then they can’t help their children make the most of it,” he said.

They also may not know how to keep their children from harm.

Dr Wong and his team interviewed more than 2,500 parents of children aged six to 17, and almost 2,300 children aged 10 to 17. They found older children tended to be more involved in ’risky’ behaviour, which meant visiting websites without restrictions and downloading materials without checking copyright status (although only about 0.8 per cent arranged to meet with people they met online).

About 60 per cent were aware of the risks of cyber-bullying, identity theft and Internet addiction but tended to play them down.

The average child spent two to three hours a day online on weekdays and four hours a day on weekends, but about 10 per cent of children spent virtually all their free time at home in front of the computer.

These were ’Internet addicts’, who showed typical addictive behaviour such as building up tolerance, having cravings and withdrawal symptoms, and risking relapse. The figure is at the low end compared to other Asian countries, but still a worry, Dr Wong said.


		Dr Wong Yu-cheung

Internet addicts had little physical contact with their peers and those friends they had tended to be mainly online and not in the real world. Older boys were more likely to be addicts and spent a lot of time playing online games, but girls could be addicted, too, and spent more time on social networking sites.

This posed a challenge to parents, as nearly one-third said they were not satisfied with their ability to help and protect their children when they were online. However, Dr Wong said Internet addiction could be mitigated by parenting style.

“If the parents used an authoritative style, in which they made demands on their children but had a warm emotional relationship with them, then it was less likely the children would develop an addiction.

“But if they were authoritarian and emotionally detached from their children, you saw high levels of symptoms. It wasn’t necessarily cause and effect because it may be that parents see their children become addicted and so they become authoritarian,” he said.

No relationship between addiction and parenting style was found when parents who had a permissive, indulgent approach.

Dr Wong said educating parents about the Internet, particularly those in the lower-income range, could help them better understand what their children were up to and enable them to monitor them more effectively.

The study was commissioned by the government to provide input to policies on computer and Internet access. Dr Wong next hopes to explore the extent of the digital divide in Mainland China.

Photos above: Courtesy of Information Technology Resource Centre, the Hong Kong Council of Social Service.

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