By Sheryl Estrada
According to a new national survey, although Latinos utilize some digital tools, like smartphones, as much as whites, Latino households are less likely to own a home computer or have access to high-speed Internet, especially bilingual and Spanish-speaking only homes. Therefore, television remains the dominant medium to access educational content for children.
“Aprendiendo en casa: Media as a Resource for Learning Among Hispanic-Latino Families,”written by Dr. June Lee of Sesame Workshop and Dr. Brigid Barron of Stanford University, takes a closer look at the Latino subsample of 682 parents of 2- to 10-year-olds from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop’s educational-media use survey. One of three reports released last week by the Cooney Center, it examines the educational media and tech use of the children.
Families that speak only English have the highest income and education and own the most types of digital devices, followed by bilingual and Spanish-only households.
Access to Computer, Internet, Smartphone at Home
| Computer | High-Speed Internet | Smartphone | |
| English-Only | 98% | 86% | 78% |
| Bilingual | 73% | 68% | 59% |
| Spanish-Only | 43% | 43% | 53% |
In the study, some findings on Latino households include:
- Families report their children are using educational content across traditional- and digital-media devices, though lack of access to computing devices constrains access to digital content for many families. Educational content is commonly accessed through television, rather than via the computer, mobile devices or video games. Spanish-onlyspeaking families experience the least access to digital technologies.
- Many parents of children who are regular users of educational media reported that’s how their children learned academic skills. However, Spanish-only families perceive less learning in the domains of math and science.
- The regularity with which parents use the Internet to find information was closely tied to access to high-speed Internet connection at home.
- Educational media fostered interest-driven learning opportunities. Parent-child joint engagement on computers, video games and mobile devices happened less frequently than with television. Spanish-only families generally spent more time in joint media engagement than English-only families.
- Latino parents, especially Spanish-only speakers, want more information about media for their young children.
The study also offers that there needs be the creation of more educational mobile content, in Spanish and English, as well as maintaining strong educational TV content. Also, media content that is needed across all platforms serves as a catalyst for conversation and activities between parents and children, as well as promotes joint media engagement.
