Parents Want Media Reins in Their Hands

Nearly nine out of 10 parents in the Southland believe primary responsibility for controlling how children use the Internet, CD-ROMs, television and video games rests with individual families rather than the government, according to a survey of California parents’ attitudes about new media.

However, the same survey found that 71% of the parents want a rating system--such as the V-chip--to help them keep tabs on an ever-expanding range of new media options.

The findings, from the California Issues Poll, were released Tuesday at the 1997 California Public Affairs Forum in Beverly Hills, a biannual event sponsored by Hitachi. The telephone survey by the Los Angeles polling firm CommSciences, asked 1,000 randomly selected parents of preschool to junior college-age children about their views on entertainment and media in the home.

“There’s a trend today in society toward thinking that problems start in the home and so solutions have to come from the home,” said Jack Torobin, president of CommSciences. “But the caveat is that parents can’t do it alone.”

In Southern California, 72% of parents surveyed said they restrict the type of Internet sites their children may go to, and 61% said they regulate the amount of time their kids spend online. By comparison, 80% of the parents surveyed said they monitor the kinds of TV programs their kids watch, and 74% set limits on TV-watching hours.

The survey found a broad acceptance of the Internet and the increasingly kid-friendly and commercial portion known as the World Wide Web. Parents who find the Internet a useful tool at work are eager to harness its educational power at home for their children, Torobin said. Among survey respondents who have PCs in their homes, those who also have Internet access is 61% in the Southland and 62% in the San Francisco Bay Area, home of Silicon Valley.

The survey found that concern about exposing children to sexual content on the Internet was equal to parents’ concern about kids’ exposure to sexual themes on TV. When it comes to violence, respondents said they believe television is a bigger problem than the Internet by a 3-1 margin.

What’s more, only 14% of parents said they would cancel their Internet access if they discovered their child had downloaded sexually explicit material. Instead, 44% said they would get software--such as filtering programs that deem certain Web sites off-limits--to help them police their child’s online activities.

Congress took up issue of Internet content in the ill-fated Communications Decency Act. The law, which was meant to aid parents by making it a crime to transmit indecent or obscene material on the Internet where it could be seen by children, was overturned by the Supreme Court in June on the grounds that it violated free speech.

The survey found that today, parents see the home computer as a family gathering place, with 28% of parents saying the PC “has the greatest potential for bringing families together in activities that both parents and children can engage in.” That makes the home computer second only to the VCR, according to the poll. Among parents under 40, the home PC took top honors, the survey found.

Parents in Orange County showed a slightly more conservative bent, with a higher number placing restrictions on how their children use the Internet. Orange County parents were also more concerned about sex and violence on the Internet compared to their counterparts in Los Angeles County.

The Southland portion of the survey was conducted by phone among households in the 213, 310, 818 and 714 area codes. The survey, which was conducted in September, has a margin of error of about 4.5%.

Results for the Northern California portion of the survey will be released Thursday.