Introduction

With the entry of new technologies into the home, we are witnessing a proliferation of descriptors for the emerging home environment. These include such terms as smart homes (Harper, 2003; Chetty, Sung and Grinter 2007), home automation and devices (Hamill 2006), the networked home (Venkatesh, Kruse and Shih 2003; Little, Sillence and Briggs 2009), the home of the future (Venkatesh et al., 2001), digital living (Anderson and Tracey 2001; Bly et al., 2006), and of course the one offered in this book: the connected home. In general, they all seem to be pointing to the same story: that the modern home in this new media/internet age is undergoing a transformation. Home life as previously understood is changing. Computing and computers are of course central to this. But how and in what ways?

It is in this context that we examine the evolution of computer use at home and its impact on family life. Our focus here is based less on speculation or scenario building and more on empirical, attitudinal data that we have collected over a ten year period. During this time, beginning in 1999, we completed four waves of national surveys of U.S. households (1999, 2003, 2008 and 2010). We present the results of these surveys as a way to summarize the developments during this 10+ year period, highlighting what we think are the salient changes.Footnote 1

The fundamental questions we address in this study are: what is the nature of computer use patterns in families over time?; who are the key players in the family who account for these developments?; and what are the attitudes of members of households to these changes?

To answer these questions we need to pause and remark on the structure of families. It is commonplace to say that this structure is based on membership: legal, biological, and affective (parents, children, companions, lovers, etc.). It is obvious too that the life cycle will affect a family, whether they are younger or older, for example, and all that implies about other activities – schools, work and so on. Gender too is a concern. But one should not forget either that families can be classified as single adult or multimember adult families and they can be with or without children. Granted that this is not an exhaustive list of all the ways that one might categorise families, we want to argue that these characteristics are sufficient to draw enough information from our survey results to arrive at some interesting patterns of computer use over time. More particularly, given these different configurations, our focus is on the following research questions:

  • What are the longitudinal computer use patterns in families?

  • What are the computer use patterns among families with and without children?

  • What are the gender differences in use patterns?

  • What are the age differences in use patterns?

Methodology and Research Findings

Study Sample: Data from national surveys of home computer use completed in 1999, 2003, 2008 and 2010 are used in this chapter.Footnote 2 The surveys are part of a larger study of personal computer use conducted by researchers at the Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations (CRITO) located at the University of California, Irvine. These telephone surveys focused only on those households where there was a personal computer in use in the home. The households were selected through random digit dialing. All those within a household who were knowledgeable about the household computer use and were over the age of 18 were eligible. Respondents reported on their own behavior as well as the behavior of other members in the household. They were asked about the use of the home computer, their attitudes regarding the home computer, other electronic devices in the household as well as the contribution of the home computer to the household activities.

In 1999, according to the US Department of Commerce (2010), 65% of the US households owned a computer (a desktop or portable) and this increased to 78% by the year 2009. In 1999, of the households with computers, 38% had broadband connection and this increased to almost 90% by 2010.

We present some key results from our on-going study (1999 to 2010) in the following sections. First, we provide a detailed description of computer uses by families during the period of our study. Second, we examine how household computer uses vary between families with children and without children. Third, we examine some relevant gender related issues. In the final section we draw some conclusions for future research in this area.

Our results are presented in Tables 4.1 thru 4.6. In Table 4.1 we provide a description of the different roles technology plays based on the perceptions and experiences of survey respondents. Table 4.2 is a summary of the types of uses during the periods of data collection and changing patterns of use over time. Table 4.3 provides a summary of results based on the composition of households (children vs. no children). Table 4.4, which is an elaboration of Table 4.3, provides a summary of results based on the size and composition of households. Table 4.5 presents parental views and concerns about children’s use of computers. Table 4.6 is a summary of data focusing on gender based uses of the computer.

Table 4.1 The perceived roles of computer use
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Table 4.2 Household level uses of computer over time
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Table 4.3 Uses of home computer by presence of children in household, 2010
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Table 4.4 Uses of home computer by size and composition of household, 2010
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Table 4.5 Parental views and controls of children’s use of computers
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Table 4.6 Gender-age differences in home computer use
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The Enabling Mediating and Transforming Nature of Technology

To capture the role of technology, we asked our respondents to indicate how computers have affected their lives. The computer has certainly played a key role as seen from the information gathered from our samples of respondents over the ten year period (Table 4.1). Its transformative role is quite evident from the responses from our subjects. While it has played a vital role in terms of its enabling and mediating functions, a larger number of its impacts are in terms of its transformation role. Our respondents have recorded progressively their agreement over the four periods of data collection on various impact statements. In this summary, for the sake of convenience, we focus primarily on the 2010 column in Table 4.1 but also use other time periods as necessary if data for 2010 is not available.

A good percentage (66%) of respondents feel that they are better informed about the world because of the internet. Computers are also seen as contributing significantly to family social life in terms of establishing contact with friends and relatives (55%) and also the use of social networking sites (21%) – which though small, is a recent phenomenon and likely to grow. Certainly there is agreement that those who are not knowledgeable about computers are falling behind (70%). Computers are seen as replacing newspapers as an information source (40% in 2008) – a sign of digital living. A large number (61%) agreed that it would be difficult to imagine life without a computer and a larger number (72%) feel that the computer has become part of the daily routine. Time saving (55%) is also reported because of the computer as well as being more productive (48%). However, very few (15% in 2008) feel that the computer has replaced the telephone which is still the most important tool for voice communication. In this context, it would be interesting to see what role smart phones would play, especially because smart phones have computer like capabilities.

In summary, the transformation is occurring in terms of technological dependence and initiatives, the indispensable nature of computers to conduct family activities and especially in the areas of communication, information, home management and social networking. While these results demonstrate people’s attitudes we will now present some actual behaviors as reported by our respondents.

Computer Uses in the Home – Some Longitudinal Trends

In the 1999 survey, the number of types of computer activities queried was 9. By the time of the 2003 survey, the number of activities had jumped to 14, and by 2008 and 2010 it had increased to 16 types of computer activities (see Table 4.2). This increase reflects the advances in technology, user competencies and learning, increased application areas as well as other structural factors over the years. For example, the use of social media (e.g. Facebook, MySpace) did not show up in our 2003 survey but does appear in more recent years. Table 4.2 shows the frequency of computer use for each of the surveyed time periods along with the rate of change for those activities common across the time periods.

Clearly a significant number of activities have shown an increase between 1999 and 2003. The major increases were in the areas of email (22%), news/weather/sports (25%), online shopping (48%), travel (50%), online banking (97%) and health-related information (67%). Job related work (2%) was steady and school related work declined (-20%). (This decline is an artefact of data collection because we did not differentiate between families with children and without children. See Table 4.3.) In fact most major increases occurred during this period in both computer use activities and in usage frequency. The early 2000s were a critical period in technology development. This reflects partly the versatility of the computer, the increasing rise of the internet and the introduction of broadband (wireless) connections over this period. In other words, as the technology became more versatile, the opportunities for different uses increased.

To more fully highlight the growth and changes in use over this 11 year period, we divided the percentage of users for each activity into three categories: top quartile (75% and above), second quartile (50%-74%) and the lower half (49% and below).

In 1999 (the early internet period), only two computer activities were engaged in by a significant number of users: hobbies and entertainment (86%) and email (78%). Activities favored by the second quartile of computer users in 1999 included job related work (71%), news, weather and sports (63%), school related work (59%), and travel and vacation planning (55%). By 2003, 95% of users reported using email and 88% were engaged in hobbies, games and entertainment uses. In addition, joining the top quartile were travel and vacation planning (82%), news, weather and sports (79%), online shopping (77%) and health-related information (77%). Job related work declined, relatively speaking, in terms of its rank. As we get closer to 2008/2010, we notice some significant shifts as well as some consolidation. Email use continues to be the highest (96% and 98%) and hobbies, games and entertainment emerge as a favored use (87% and 84%). Uploading and downloading of photographs and videos increased significantly from 55% in 2003 to 76% in 2008 and 84% in 2010. Although not as meteoric, online banking continued to rise from 60% in 2003 to 67% in 2008 and 77% in 2010. Online networking, little known or used in 2003, demonstrates the speed at which new uses of the home computer have diffused. While in 2008, 44% of the households reported using an online network site such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, by 2010 a full 76% reported using these sites.

There are other significant trends of note. Job related work across the population stayed steady between 1999 (71%) and 2003 (72%), but declined in 2008 (63%) and continued steady in 2010 at 66%. Thus the prevailing view that the computer’s main role is to transfer work from office to the home and is a work tool provided a limited vision of where the technology was going. It is true that school and job for many families formed the cornerstone of why the computer was initially purchased. However, other major shifts in usage reflect the changes in the use of the home computer over time. Initially, the introduction of the computer into the home was more utility driven and with progression of time, it has become an emotional as well as social technology within the family context.

Clearly, the volume of computer use has changed across the eleven year period under study. Some explanations are possible for these trends. First, as stated earlier, computers were seen less as merely work/education tools as was the case in the pre-internet or early internet period. Computers had become versatile, and also thanks to the power and potential of the internet, the usage potential offered greater depth. That is, as technology advanced and other possibilities have emerged the relative positions of work/education related uses took a back seat, as it were. In addition, computer users had become quite comfortable and familiar with computers to the point the technology was no longer alien to the family environment and was considered a necessity and an integral part of the domestic ecology. And, in the case of educational use, schools and educational institutions progressively became better equipped with computers than before and had become highly advanced presumably leading to greater and more sophisticated applications in the school environment.

Another way of looking at this is that at least in the case of educational use, there is indeed not a decline in the domestic front if we take into consideration those families with children compared to those without children. Since our sample includes both families with children and without children, our hypothesis is that educational use declines may not be recorded among families with children. To test this, we divided our sample into families with children and without children. In 1999, 83% of the households with children reported schoolwork use. In 2003, 64% (vs. 40%) reported schoolwork use which jumped to 78% (vs. 36%) in 2008 and 80% (vs. 51%) in 2010 (see Tables 4.2 and 4.3 for 2010).

Families with Children and Without Children

Household composition is an important factor to consider when looking at the kinds of home computer uses. Table 4.3 breaks down home computer use by households with children versus households without children in 2010. It can be easily seen that for the year 2010, 80% of the families with children used computers for educational purposes compared to only 51% in those families with no children (as reported above). There are also other differences between families with children and without children. For example, differences are also observable in the use of the home computer for hobbies, games and entertainment (92% vs. 79%), for obtaining information regarding news, weather and sports (92% vs. 86%), uploading and downloading of photos and videos (91% vs. 81%), online banking (83% vs. 73%), online networking (87% vs. 70%), family and household recordkeeping (64% vs. 56%) and even online journaling and blogging (48% vs. 41%). Clearly, the presence of children makes a difference.

One other explanation for the differences between families with children and families without children may be that there may be more members per family with children compared to families without children. In other words, it may be more a question of family size than the presence of children in the household. That is, families with more members may also be using computers to a higher degree whether children are present or not.

To address this issue and refine our analysis further, we divided our sample into the following four categories: single adult, two adults with no children, 3 or more adults with no children and households with children (Table 4.4). The idea behind this is to see if the real differences are between small families vs. large families under the realistic assumption that families with children are generally larger than families without children. Thus the differences between households with children and households without children mentioned earlier may cancel out if we take into consideration the size of the household. As can be seen from Table 4.3, households with children still account for differences in some major categories of use - online banking, news, weather and sports, hobbies, games and entertainment, family and household recordkeeping, and, of course, school-related work. However, the 3+ adult households show greater values compared to children households on the following categories: job-related work, calendar, online journals and blogs, and travel and vacation planning. In all these cases, both categories of households (3+ adult households and households with children) score higher values than single person or and in many cases, two adults only households.

Given the above analysis we reach two major conclusions. First, somewhat obvious, household size matters in terms of level of use. That is, the larger the household size, the greater the number of uses and levels of use. A more important result is that households with children out score any other type of household. Thus a very important result is that one meaning of computers is that in order to call it a family computer, children’s presence does matter. This may be a typical conclusion that we may reach about some other technologies in the home. For example, one can make a reasonable hypothesis that households with children have a greater use of kitchen appliances (e.g. refrigerators, stoves, dishwasher/dryer), other appliances (e.g. clothes washer/dryer), television (entertainment), digital camera and so on. The implications for technology producers can be quite profound.

Parental Concerns and Issues Regarding Children’s Use of Computers

The question of parental concerns and exercize of power and control over children through the construction and operation of rules is an important topic in the family literature (Grieshaber 1997). Such controls are instituted in everyday life settings that include mealtime rituals, educational/recreational activities and other issues concerning personal grooming, attire, language use, leisure time activities and so forth. Thus the context of home computer use may be considered another instance of parental responsibilities and supervision. On the other hand, one may ask the question, are computers qualitatively different? This is also an issue of moral ordering of the households as discussed by Strain (2003).

The context of children’s use of computers is a rapidly growing area of research (Livingstone 2009, Subrahmanyam 2000). The question we pose in this section is what are the parental views and concerns regarding the use of computers by their children? (See Table 4.5 for results). Certainly, the computers are viewed as an important educational tool (75%). On a very positive note, a large percentage of parents (75%) feel that children are more knowledgeable about computers than adults. This gives credence to the fact that there has now emerged a computer generation, that is, youngsters who are growing up as users of computing technology and take to it like ducks to water. However, an equal number of our respondents (75%) also express concern about what their children are accessing on the internet. At the same time, only a small percentage (36%) feel that computers make children anti-social, while 32% disagree with this view. Roughly half of the sample (48%) think that their children are spending too much time on the computer. On the other hand, a very small percentage (27%) feel that computers discourage creativity and nearly half the sample (48%) disagree with this statement. In other words, computers are not viewed as inhibiting creative aspects of children’s learning.

Parents also pursue some control measures to keep their children in check. For example, 57% of the parents checked to see which websites their children visited. Almost equal numbers of parents (58%) worked along with their children on computers. We have to presume that this is true of families with much younger children rather than teens. Half of the sample limited the amount of time children can be on the internet. Control measures were also extended to school activities. Half of the sample (51%) reported using email to communicate with teachers and half of them (53%) said they go on the school website to check for homework assignments.

The tension between parental concerns and children’s mildly irritable reaction to their parents’ interference is humorously yet realistically captured in the following “Fox Trots” comics.

 
figure 4_a_215309_1_En

Fox Trots classics by Bill Amend. Adapted from FoxTrot © 2000 Bill Amend. Used by permission of Universal Uclick. All rights reserved

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To summarize the parental concerns and views, our results show that they range from positive to cautious to negative. Reading between the figures, we might say that most parents view computers as beneficial to the educational experience of their children and their development.

Gender Related Issues – Feminization of Home Computing

Over the years, there have been active debates and issues concerning differences in technology use by females vs. males both at home and at work (Dholakia 2006, Klawe, Whitney and Simard 2009). In fact, some have argued and contested that the word “technology” itself is male oriented because of connotations associated with complex machinery, and technical-rational, non-emotional qualities – in general the meanings attached to “tool” orientation and work-related artefacts (Cockburn 1994). On the other hand, history tells us that women have engaged in industrial and farm labor as well as in operating office equipment and doing production work in factories, textile mills and the like. In addition, in the domestic sphere, there has been research showing that women, because of their domestic roles, have been the main users of many household appliances and gadgets associated with their roles and in fact are more knowledgeable than men when it comes to everyday technologies and artefacts – the implication being that there is no natural division in terms of competencies or predilections between males and females but one based on social roles men or women play. This is not the place to revisit these debates in a major way, but it is important to contextualize our present study.

To provide a deeper understanding of these issues we present some gender-based trends in our study. Our results are summarized in Table 4.6 which is reconstructed from our survey results. To keep it simple, we are presenting 2010 survey results in the table. In order to capture gender differences in usage patterns, we identify situations where differences between males and females show up in our results. We also feel that in order to refine these results, we need to take into account whether these differences show up within age categories. Thus one hypothesis is that since computers are a recent phenomenon, perhaps younger females show different patterns of use compared to older females. Consequently, their uses may be more similar to males and in some cases may even exceed male patterns based on specific contexts of use and relative familiarity. In general, as more women begin to use computers at home, this phenomenon may be described as feminization of computing technology at home.

As shown in Table 4.6, here are some highlights. In terms of the overall sample, there are no gender differences in the use of email, online shopping, online banking, games/entertainment, uploading photos and instant messaging. However, there is a tendency towards more male engagement in the following categories: news and sports, pursuing hobbies, job-related work at home, watching a video, calendar, online networking, online journals and blogs, and making phone calls. Conversely, in the overall sample, a higher percentage of females are involved in health-related information, and maintaining a webpage. These results show that males report higher percentage than females in their use patterns. However, if we control for age, different gender-based use patterns emerge. Here are some interesting results:

More females in the age group 18–30 use email. In the educational use of computers, there is no difference between males and females in the 18-30 age group. More females are engaged in uploading photos in the age groups 18-30, 31-45, and 46-60. As far as online journal/blogging is concerned, females and males use it in the same proportion in all age groups under 60 and there are no differences.

To sum up, in the aggregate, a higher percentage of males are involved in nine activities, more females are involved in two activities, and an equal proportion of males and females in six activities. But that is not the correct story. Once we control for age, a higher percentage of younger females are more involved than males in online networking, email, and uploading photographs. In addition, more females are involved in online banking within the 31-45 age group. In other words,in order to study the phenomenon of feminization of computing in the home, we need to look at the data not just in the aggregate level, but across age categories. Clearly, the younger females are at the forefront of computerization as compared to older females. The really laggard group, unsurprisingly, is females in the 61+ age segment. In addition, if we examine the broad category of communication, social networking, and some aspects of home management and health related matters, females are ahead.

At the risk of generalization, one might say that there is a growing feminization of computing in the home front based on the differential roles and interests and not technical competencies.

Conclusions

The results clearly reveal the following trends during the ten year period; some to be expected, and some more surprising.

Within the home, our data shows that communication as a whole has increased, with people spending more time on email and social networking. There has been an increase in the amount of information that people seek, whether it be of a general sort related to the specifics of shopping, health or news and sports. Computer use and the internet has also increased the amount of time given to home management, with people spending more time on online banking and record keeping. Computing has also increased the amount of time given to daily leisure; to hobbies and games. Meanwhile, and external to the home, there has been an increase in the amount of community involvement family members engage in, while computing and the internet has decreased the amount of time they give to their job, to work. Perhaps equally surprising has been the slight decrease in the amount of time given to school related activities –homework and such like. More generally, and finally, our research shows that computer use is more prominent with the presence of children: having kids makes it more likely that computers will suffuse domestic life. Our research also shows that with more computing, there is a growing phenomenon of feminization of the domestic sphere. Women are using computing more and more, certainly more than males within the home – even though males are themselves using computing more. Women use computing not only to undertake the responsibilities of being in touch and being sociable, but also to undertake more of the administrative tasks of the domestic sphere. As they do so, so the home is being feminised through computing.