Parents of teenagers are more vigilant about regulating the media content consumed by their children than the amount of time their children spend in front of a computer; over two-thirds of parents (68%) say they have rules about the kinds of internet sites their teenaged children can or cannot visit, as well as rules about what kinds of information their children can share with people they talk to on the internet. Fifty-five percent of all parents have rules about how much time their children can spend using the internet. However, a significantly greater percentage of online parents create rules about the amount of time that their children can spend on the internet than create rules about how much time their children can spend watching television — 69% of parents of online teens report regulating how much time their children spend on the web, while only 57% of those same parents have rules for how long their children are allowed to watch television. Read More

Russell Heimlich  is a former web developer at Pew Research Center.