Internet Use by Children

Question

Does anyone know, offhand, if stats are collected on internet usage by children under 15? I can find all sorts of surveys, but the lowest age I can find is 15.

Answer

The National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) collected data on computer and internet use by children under 15. You can locate examples of the types of questions used to collect these data by doing a quick search for "Internet" in the questionnaires for NLSCY cycle 7 (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getInstrumentLink&SurvId=4450&SurvVer=1&InstaId=16044&InstaVer=7&lang=en&db=imdb&adm=8&dis=2).

NLSCY microdata are available through the Research Data Centres (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/rdc-cdr/index-eng.htm) and custom tabulations can be produced on request on a cost recovery basis (I can refer you to an Account Executive in our Toronto regional office if custom tables are of interest). Public use microdata files for this survey haven't been produced since the late 90's due to confidentiality reasons as this is a longitudinal survey.

I also looked at the documentation for the Canadian Internet Use Survey (2007) and General Social Survey cycle 19 on time use but the target populations for these surveys appear to be too old for your needs.

I hope that this is helpful.