More than half of young children now have access at home to newer mobile devices such as smartphones or an iPad-style tablet computer, and more than a quarter of their parents have downloaded “apps” for their children to use, a new survey suggests.
The report, based on a nationwide survey of nearly 1,400 parents of children age 8 and younger, also points to a new “app gap": Only 14 percent of low-income parents have ever downloaded a mobile application for their children, compared with 47 percent of wealthier parents.
The report, by Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, also finds that, of all the media technology at their disposal, children continue to spend the most time with television, which is also the favored platform for educational programming. Two-thirds of children in this age group watch television at least once a day, and 42 percent have a TV in their bedroom.
