Internet use and academic outcomes in low-income families

¶ … Children and Internet Use," Jackson, von Eye & Biocca (2003) use data from the HomeNetToo longitudinal field study, which was funded in part by the National Science Foundation. The project started in the year 2000, and was design to measure a sample of families over 18 months. A total of 90 families were included in the data collection, totaling 117 adults and 140 children. The sample was taken from a medium-sized city in the Midwestern United States. Average age of the children was 13 years, and the majority of the children (83%) were African-American. The majority of adults (67%) were African-American and female (80%). The objective of the survey was to record both antecedents and consequences of home internet use in a cohort of low-income families, as well as to provide raw statistics for research and analysis. The Jackson, von Eye & Biocca (2003) research uses data from the HomeNetToo study to discuss not only patterns of use observed, but also the social, psychological, and academic consequences of using the internet for low-income children. The results show that the Internet had no measurable effect on the children's social life or on psychological measures, but internet use did improve the academic outcomes for this sample. Jackson, von Eye & Biocca (2003) hypothesize as to why these results were observed in the HomeNetToo study.

Economic and social status is the primary independent variable in this research, which aims to highlight some of the differences in technology use among low-income families and particularly children in those families. The research shows that low income families do not use the internet for communication, and the researchers speculate that the reason for the lack of use of email and other forms of digital communication would be that such technologies have yet to become entrenched in low-income communities. Furthermore, the research did not reveal any changes to the children's overall self-worth after internet use. Yet the use of the internet did lead to measurable positive impacts on student grades and test scores. The research therefore suggests that children from low income families would benefit tremendously, and suffer comparatively few if any ill effects, from an increase in access to the latest internet technologies.

In "Does home internet use influence the academic performance of low-income children?" Jackson, et al. (2006) use the data gleaned in the National Science Foundation study HomeNetToo. Focusing exclusively on the data related to academic outcomes, the researchers found that over the course of sixteen months, standardized test scores and grade point averages were higher for children who used the internet more versus those who used it less. The researchers found that although older students use the internet for longer periods of time and more often than younger children, both older and younger children exhibit the same improvements in their academic performance when they spend time online. The researchers conclude that the "digital divide" is more serious than has been believed and can have meaningful long-term outcomes in terms of inhibiting upward social mobility.