Websites, Children's

Children as Consumers

The World Wide Web is shrinking the world, connecting small groups with shared interests; this may be especially important for children who cannot easily meet new people on their own. Children can talk with others without sharing their name or where they live.

The Internet also provides access to consumeroriented information for children who visit the websites of brands that interest them. According to Nielsen NetRatings, children prefer commercial sites such as [Page 874]Diva Starz, Toon Town Online, Cartoon Network, Barbie, and Disney Channel. Boys tend to like search engines and sites about sports more than girls do, and girls prefer entertainment sites. Girls see the Web more as a communication medium than a place to get information, visiting sites such as AOL Instant Messenger, and websites for magazines, YM and CosmoGirl.

Such sites have advertising content tightly woven into the content; one example is the Disney website, which features famous characters, an online store, information about theme parks, and so on. Children younger than 5 years have trouble telling advertising apart from content. Children with less experience using the Web also may not be aware of the fact that their favorite sites are commercial sites; one study found that they thought the companies just wanted to provide entertainment on commercial sites. Children click on banner ads that seem to be part of the website content, especially if there are familiar characters in the advertisement.

Children have specific design preferences. They like to move the mouse around and explore the site, looking for things that are clickable. They want age-appropriate graphics, not pictures that look like they are for babies. They like sound effects and animations. Website usability expert Jakob Nielsen found that children were best able to use straightforward sites like http://amazon.com and http://yahoo.com, even though they are primarily designed for adults. However, many of the websites he studied that had been designed specifically for children were too complex and hard to navigate, with nonstandard interface design that made too few elements look clickable. Children's sites often mix content for adults and kids on the same page or require visitors to complete complex forms before they can see information, which makes them difficult for children to use.

Children as Producers

Children like to see content created by other children, so including children in the design of websites may help increase their usage. The Web is an ideal publishing environment; children can freely publish photographs, text, and multimedia files. Many children create their own websites; one study found that 24% of children 12 to 17 years old have personal websites. In 2000, the Pew Research Center found that while 45% of teens are using the Internet, few had made any web pages, although girls were more likely to do this because they prefer to use the Internet for communication. The more experience children have online, the more complex sites they create; children without much previous Internet experience substitute what they have learned from their experience with other media and create linear sites similar to print magazines.

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