How Youths’ Influence on Their Parents’ Technology Adoption is Related to Digital Inclusion in Chile

• In Event: The Digital Divide: Worldwide Challenges for Communication Across the Life Span in the Digital Age

Abstract

Digital inequalities are reproduced from one generation to another (e.g., Straubhaar, Spence, Tufekci, & Lentz, 2012). This top-down transmission across generations, however, does not always follow a linear pattern. The evidence suggests that youth help parents adjust to technological innovations (e.g., Ito et al., 2009; Katz, 2010), particularly among people from a lower socioeconomic status and women (Correa, 2014; Correa et al., 2013). These results are meaningful because older people, women and lower-SES individuals tend to lag behind in digital media adoption and usage (e.g., Cooper, 2006; Helsper, 2010; van Dijk, 2005).

Situated at the nexus of intergenerational communication and generational differences in the adoption of communication technologies, using two parent-child surveys conducted in Chile in 2011 and 2014, this research project explores to what extent the bottom-up influence from children to parents is associated with a reduction of socioeconomic, age, and gender-based digital gaps. Preliminary results indicate, for example, this phenomenon was associated with reductions of socioeconomic gaps in technology usage, particularly computer and Internet usage.


References

Cooper, J. (2006). The digital divide: the special case of gender. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 22, 320-334.

Correa, T. (2014). Bottom-up technology transmission within families: Exploring how youths influence their parents in the usage of digital media with dyadic data. Journal of Communication. 64, 103-124.

Correa, T., J. Straubhaar, W. Chen & J. Spence (2013). Brokering new technologies: The role of children in their parents’ usage of the Internet. New Media and Society. Online first.

Helsper, E. J. (2010). Genders and Internet use across generations and life stages. Communication Research, 37(3), 352-374.

Ito, M., Horst, H., Bittani, M., boyd, d., Herr-Stephenson, B., Lange, P. G., et al. Living and learning with new media: Summary of findings from the digital youth project. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Katz, V. S. (2010). How children of immigrants use media to connect their families with the community. Journal of Children and Media, 4(3), 28-315.

Straubhaar, J., Spence, J., Tufekci, Z., Lentz, R. G.. (2012). Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, class, gender, and the digital divide in Austin. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Van Dijk, J. (2005). The deepening divide: Inequality in the information society. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Author

• Teresa Correa, Universidad Diego Portales