Elsevier

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 69, Issue 10, November 2009, Pages 1501-1505
Social Science & Medicine

Short report
Parental education and children's online health information seeking: Beyond the digital divide debate

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.08.039Get rights and content

Abstract

Research has shown that increasing numbers of teenagers are going online to find health information, but it is unclear whether there are disparities in the prevalence of online health seeking among young Internet users associated with social and economic conditions. Existing literature on Internet uses by adults indicates that low income, less educated, and minority individuals are less likely to be online health seekers. Based on the analysis of data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project for the US, this study finds that teens of low education parents are either as likely as or even more likely than teens of high education parents to seek online health information. Multiple regression analysis shows that the higher engagement in health seeking by teens of low education parents is related to a lower prevalence of parental Internet use, suggesting that some of these teens may be seeking online health information on behalf of their low education parents. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the issues of the digital divide and digital empowerment.

Introduction

The online health information seeking behavior of young people, especially adolescents, has been the focus of many recent studies (Borzekowski et al., 2006, Eysenbach, 2008 Harvey et al., 2007, Ybarra et al., 2008). Adolescence is known as a period where the rise of many developmental health needs is met with reluctance in help seeking. Puberty, pregnancy, drugs and alcohol, eating disorders, and depression, for example, are emergent health issues that are of great concern to young people, yet these are sensitive and embarrassing health topics about which teenagers are reluctant to discuss with parents and medical professionals (Eysenbach, 2008). The Internet has been considered an optimal way to disseminate health information to adolescents (Cotten & Gupta, 2004).

The enthusiasm about such a role of the Internet is based on two main grounds. First, the Internet not only provides immediate access to a wide variety of health information, but, more importantly, it also enables users to access such information anonymously. The privacy and confidentiality afforded by the Internet allows adolescents to seek information on sensitive health topics without embarrassment. Second, compared to adults, adolescents have more readily adopted the Internet technology. Growing up digital, most of today's teenagers are familiar with the computer and have less difficulty surfing the Internet (Tapscott, 1998). In other words, using the Internet to disseminate information on sensitive health topics to the youth is an appealing possibility.

Indeed, an increasing number of young people have been going online to find health information, and many of them treat the Internet as the primary source of such information (Gray, Klein, Noyce, Sesselberg, & Cantrill, 2005). A recent national survey reported that 28% of 12–17 year-olds in the United States have searched for health information on the Internet (Fox & Jones, 2009), and the older they are, the more they tend to do that (Ybarra & Suman, 2008). It has also been found that a large part of these online searches are related to topics pertaining to “sexual health and bodily development” (Harvey et al., 2007, p.771). The Internet, therefore, has already played an important role in supplying teenagers with needy health information they find hard to obtain elsewhere.

However, some scholars are concerned about disparities in online health information seeking among young people. There is indication that health information seeking on the Internet varies with a number of demographic factors, including sex, age, race, and social economic status (Cotten and Gupta, 2004, Rice, 2006). The disparity associated with family SES has been a major concern to scholars of social inequality and the digital divide (Borzekowski and Rickert, 2001a, Borzekowski and Rickert, 2001b, Livingstone and Helsper, 2007). Even though the absolute number of low SES online health seekers has increased over time, the number of high SES health users has grown at a faster rate, thus widening the gap in the utilization of e-health services between the rich and poor (Hsu et al., 2005). Since parental education, a key component of family SES, is known to be related to children's computer usage (Attewell, 2001, Looker and Thiessen, 2003), it follows that the health utilization gap may also occur among young Internet users. This study examines the relationship between parental education and children's online health information seeking in the context of the on-going digital divide debate.

Section snippets

The digital divide debate

The debate on the digital divide concerns disparities in Internet access and uses associated with social and economic conditions. Disparities in access to the Internet which occurred in the early stages of Internet development have been referred as the [first] digital divide (Compaine, 2001; Hoffman & Novak, 1998), and disparities in the use of the Internet among those with Internet access have been referred to as the second digital divide (Attewell, 2001, Zhao and Elesh, 2007). As Internet

Parental education and health information seeking

Parental education has been singled out by many scholars as a critical factor that influences children's engagement with the Internet. Attewell (2001), for example, points out that how children in a family use the computer and what they use it for are determined not by the computer but by what he calls the social envelope around the computer which consists of the “attitudes, competencies, and involvement of parents and siblings” (p.257). Attewell argues that parents' educational background and

Data and samples

Data for this study comes from the Pew Internet and American Life Project (www.pewinternet.org) which sponsors regular general purpose “tracking” surveys as well as frequent special topic surveys. All those surveys use national samples. Variables analyzed in this study were obtained from three datasets: Parents & Teens 2004 Survey (n = 2717), Parents & Teens 2006 Survey (n = 2680), and August 2006 Daily Tracking Survey (n = 7572), all of which were telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey

Results

Table 1 presents the percentage and number of cases for the measures of education and online health information seeking from the three Pew datasets. There are missing data on both items. The number of valid responses to the health information seeking item is 2490 for the 2006 P&T sample (n = 2680), 2356 for the 2004 P&T sample (n = 2717), and 5279 for the 2006 Daily Tracking sample (n = 7572). The results indicate that more adult Internet users (79.8%) sought online health information than did teen

Conclusions and discussion

This study has provided useful answers to the questions posed earlier. Does parental education affect where and how children access the Internet? Yes, it does. Teens from high education families are more likely to access the Internet from home with a high-speed broadband connection, whereas teens from low education families are more likely to access the Internet from school or somewhere else using a low-speed dialup modem. Does educational attainment affect online health information seeking?

References (31)

  • D.L.G. Borzekowski et al.

    Adolescent cybersurfing for health information: a new resource that crosses barriers

    Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine

    (2001)
  • D. Boyd

    Viewing American class divisions through facebook and Myspace

  • M. Brodie et al.

    Health information, the internet, and the digital divide

    Health Affairs

    (2000)
  • D. Buckingham et al.

    Selling the digital dream

  • Cited by (74)

    • Sexual health experiences, knowledge and understanding in low SES female teenagers: A diary approach

      2019, Journal of Adolescence
      Citation Excerpt :

      A reason for this is the decline in comprehensive sexual health programs in low SES areas (Santelli, Lindberg, Finer & Singh, 2007) meaning that is difficult for low SES female teenagers to access reliable sexual health information. Despite the obvious importance of good SRE programmes, teenagers often regard the media as a more useful source for learning about sex and relationships (Buckingham & Bragg, 2004) with teenagers from low SES backgrounds most likely to search for sexual health information online (Zhao, 2009). While sexual health information is available online, there is currently little understanding of the sexual health information needs of female teenagers, what information they have already, their sexual health concerns and their access to information resources.

    • Obtaining indirect internet access: An examination how reasons for internet non-use relate to proxy internet use

      2019, Telecommunications Policy
      Citation Excerpt :

      Other proxy-users felt that asking internet users to do things for them was easier and faster for users in comparison to teaching someone the necessary digital skills, which takes more time and patience. However, these views might change with changed circumstances, such as health or family arrangements (Zhao, 2009). General population-based studies indicate that issues of interest, access, costs, and skills remain significant reasons for internet non-use, whereas qualitative and mixed-methods studies establish a link between reasons for non-use and engagement in PIU, reporting specific characteristics of non-users who are more likely to engage in PIU.

    • The role of social support networks in proxy Internet use from the intergenerational solidarity perspective

      2018, Telematics and Informatics
      Citation Excerpt :

      Blank (2013) reports that Internet users who have helped someone else use the Internet are more likely to be young, students, better educated, and have a high income; he also shows that in all OxIS rounds since 2009, children and grandchildren are the most common sources of proxy Internet use, with over 60% of Internet non-users who engaged in proxy use in the last year reporting (grand-)children’s help. Interestingly, Zhao (2009) found that children with parents who are Internet non-users are more likely to seek online health information than those whose parents are online. Besides children, previous research also cites other members of Internet non-users’ personal networks including relatives, spouses, work colleagues, and friends as sources of proxy Internet use (Blank, 2013; Courtois and Verdegem, 2016; Reisdorf et al., 2012; Selwyn et al., 2005; van Deursen et al., 2014).

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

    View full text