TY - JOUR
T1 - Parental monitoring and children's internet use
T2 - The role of information, control, and cues
AU - Gallego, Francisco A.
AU - Malamud, Ofer
AU - Pop-Eleches, Cristian
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like thank Ramon Rodriguez and his staff at the Ministry of Education for providing the data and technical assistance necessary to conduct this study. We are especially grateful to Jaime Bellolio who collaborated with us on an evaluation of the “Yo Elijo mi PC” program that is the setting of the present study. Cristian Larroulet, Jose Ignacio Cuesta, Antonia Asenjo, Magdalena Bennet, Ana Mendoza, Dario Romero, Sebastian Otero, Diego Cussen, and Alejandro Saenz provided excellent research assistance. We would like to thank Paloma Acevedo, Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Peter Bergman, Samuel Berlinski, Marianne Bertrand, Lucas Coffman, Stefano Dellavigna, Jeanne Lafortune, Claudia Martínez, Philip Oreopoulos, as well as seminar participants at Columbia Teacher's College, IFPRI, the Inter-American Development Bank, NBER Children Meetings, Northwestern University, Princeton University, PUC-Chile, the University of Houston and the University of Virginia for comments and suggestions. We would like to thank FONDECYT (Project 1141111), J-PAL, the Columbia-Chile fund, and the Population Research Center, grant # R24 HD051152-05 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for financial support. All errors are our own.
Funding Information:
We would like thank Ramon Rodriguez and his staff at the Ministry of Education for providing the data and technical assistance necessary to conduct this study. We are especially grateful to Jaime Bellolio who collaborated with us on an evaluation of the “Yo Elijo mi PC” program that is the setting of the present study. Cristian Larroulet, Jose Ignacio Cuesta, Antonia Asenjo, Magdalena Bennet, Ana Mendoza, Dario Romero, Sebastian Otero, Diego Cussen, and Alejandro Saenz provided excellent research assistance. We would like to thank Paloma Acevedo, Felipe Barrera-Osorio, Peter Bergman, Samuel Berlinski, Marianne Bertrand, Lucas Coffman, Stefano Dellavigna, Jeanne Lafortune, Claudia Martínez, Philip Oreopoulos, as well as seminar participants at Columbia Teacher's College, IFPRI, the Inter-American Development Bank, NBER Children Meetings, Northwestern University, Princeton University, PUC-Chile, the University of Houston and the University of Virginia for comments and suggestions. We would like to thank FONDECYT (Project 1141111 ), J-PAL , the Columbia-Chile fund , and the Population Research Center, grant # R24 HD051152-05 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for financial support. All errors are our own.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2020/8
Y1 - 2020/8
N2 - This paper explores the role of parental information and control on children's internet use in Chile. We designed and implemented a randomized experiment whereby 7700 parents were sent weekly SMSs messages that (i) provided specific information about their children's internet use, and/or (ii) offered assistance with the installation of parental control software. We find that providing parents with specific information changes parenting behavior and reduces children's internet use by 6–10%. Evidence from heterogeneity analysis and machine learning algorithms suggest that this information substitutes for the presence of parents at home and complements parents' capacity to be involved in their children's lives. We do not find significant impacts from helping parents directly control their children's internet access with parental control software. In addition, we find that the strength of the cue associated with receiving a message has a significant impact on internet use.
AB - This paper explores the role of parental information and control on children's internet use in Chile. We designed and implemented a randomized experiment whereby 7700 parents were sent weekly SMSs messages that (i) provided specific information about their children's internet use, and/or (ii) offered assistance with the installation of parental control software. We find that providing parents with specific information changes parenting behavior and reduces children's internet use by 6–10%. Evidence from heterogeneity analysis and machine learning algorithms suggest that this information substitutes for the presence of parents at home and complements parents' capacity to be involved in their children's lives. We do not find significant impacts from helping parents directly control their children's internet access with parental control software. In addition, we find that the strength of the cue associated with receiving a message has a significant impact on internet use.
KW - Internet use
KW - Monitoring
KW - Parent child-interactions
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85086921337&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85086921337&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104208
DO - 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104208
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85086921337
SN - 0047-2727
VL - 188
JO - Journal of Public Economics
JF - Journal of Public Economics
M1 - 104208
ER -