Preschoolers & their mums on the web

Preschoolers
and their mums
on the web

Gerda Van Damme
Presentation at Digital Marketing First,
Brussels, 28/10/2010

Who is Dreammachine?
• We are a small web agency, working on medium-sized budgets for mainly big clients, such as Henkel,
Microsoft, Nutrition & Santé, Nestlé, a.o.
• People in our organization have experience in building web projects since ‘95, the very early days of
the internet in Belgium.
• Our services are website development and on-line campaigns.
• ...not especially targeted at children, we usually work for all age groups.

What’s so fascinating about preschoolers online?
Our current preschoolers are the ﬁ rst generation of internet users who are born at a time when the internet
is completely accepted as a mainstream element in our daily lives, with internet access available in the vast
majority of households. They are raised by the generation (called generation Y) who adopted the internet with a
huge enthusiasm 10 years ago, when they were teens, using already applications like IM on a daily basis. In this
respect their mothers are very different than all previous generations of mothers.

This paper is based upon desk research and will treat a number of topics related to preschoolers going online,
and to the mums of those preschoolers.

We will treat the following topics:
• Characteristics of the preschooler
• The kids corner on the internet
• Use of electronic media by preschoolers
• Usability issues of preschooler websites
• Webvertising towards preschoolers
• Legal & ethical considerations
• Reaching the preschooler mums

Preschoolers and their mums on the web. Gerda Van Damme 28/10/2010
All rights reserved © 2010 Dreammachine and cited authors — see references.

12, rue de la Bruyère St. Martin | 1320 Tourinnes-la-Grosse | Belgium | Phone +32 (0) 10 86 12 42
17, rue de Rocroi | 5660 Cul-des-Sarts | Belgium | Phone +32 (0)60 39 09 04
www.dreammachine.be | info@dreammachine.be

Who are those kids?
What can they do and how do they think?
To understand the way preschoolers use the internet, let’s fi rst have a look at their cognitive and emotional
development, which will infl uence their browsing behaviour and their browsing capabilities.

• Preschoolers are very curious, but they have a have a short attention span.
• Once absorbed in an activity, they like to do the same thing over and over.
• When they master something new, they have a huge sense of accomplishment

There is a big difference between kids 3-4 years old, and 5 years old.

Age 3-4:
• They like to laugh and try to tell themselves simple jokes that make no sense.
• They are still very egocentric.
• They are concrete thinkers concentrating on one feature at a time, they don’t understand the concept of
compensation. To explain this, the easiest is to refer to the story you may know of the tall and the wide glass
fi lled with water. Toddlers will always think that the tallest glass has most water, and cannot compensate the
lower height with the larger width.
• They do categorizing based upon 1 attribute. E.g. for a child an apple may not be recognized as fruit, as you
cannot squeeze the juice out. Also they have no ability to see hierarchies yet. This will have an impact on the
way they can understand subcategories in a website.
• They have no comprehension of time. If you say that their friend will visit in a week, they will ask every day if
he’s coming today.
• They display very externalized emotions (crying, laughing, fighting,…).



Age 5:
• Empathy starts to really develop and they start learning socially acceptable behaviour.
• Start using and understanding symbols. E.g. ‘I am a witch’ ( sitting on a broom, this is enough as a symbol
to make the statement acceptable for the child).
• Distinction between appearance and reality starts to develop, but they love to ‘pretend’ that their
phantasies are real. They still sincerily believe that things can appear and disappear.
• They are questioning adults to understand the world.
• They still have no strategies for memory.
• They have a limited understanding of maps, but difﬁculties with understanding e.g. that the red line on a
map doesn’t mean that the street is red.
• They learn from experiences (‘if I do this, this will happen’)  they see causality.
• In complex tasks they will only focus on the current subtask.
• They start to accept a delay in the fulﬁ lment of their desires. E.g. wait for their turn to play with a toy.

The kids corner on the internet
What is the internet according to kids?

• Kids have a very confused understanding of the concept of the internet. One child will say: ‘It sits in the
computer. But talking to granny on the computer, is NOT using the internet, as that’s ‘not in the computer,
but through the telephone in fact’. ‘It’s all explanations, pages pages pages’. ‘Youtube’. ‘Games’.
• Here’s the explanation of a very wise girl : “The internet connects all the computers in the world.”



What is the internet-offer for preschoolers really?

• Together with their parents or older brothers or sisters, they use non-targeted applications, such as Youtube,
email, Facebook, search, ...
• Further it’s mainly all about games and edutainment, often offered by media (video, tv show related
content, Disney,…) or brands.

Some examples of games and edutainment: sound associations, matching games, shapes, colours, sizes games,
jigsaws, dot-to-dot drawing games, memory games, number or letter games, quizzes, games against speed,
stories,… etc.

The browser they are using to access the internet can be a standard browser, in which parental controls can
be installed. But there are also very nice kids browsers: e.g. Kido’z (community based content, paid browser),
Krowser, MyBee (from KPN, only in Dutch). ISP’s also offer safety packages for parents with kids going on the
internet.

Electronic media usage of preschoolers
Not many ﬁgures are available. Most extensive metrics studies that are publically available start at ages like 7, 12,
13, 15 years old. Here are some data which were quite striking to us:

• Nielsen Online says that younger children are going online at a faster rate than any other group.
• In 2005 1 out of 4 of 5-6 year US kids used a computer on an average of 50 minutes on a typical day. The
amount of time children spend on a computer has tripled over the last decade.
• They are quickly quite computer savvy: At average children are able to point and click with a mouse from
the age of 3,5.



• 3 parents out of 4 are convinced that using a computer mostly helps children’s learning (versus 43% who
think that about television).
• In Holland 1 out of 4 Dutch preschoolers are online at least once a week.

This generation of preschoolers going online is not the very ﬁ rst one of course: Where 9 years ago children of 7 to
12 had no internet experience and were struggling as newbees with the computer and the internet, those now
behave as wizkids, where the preschoolers are now the ones struggling with scrollbars etc. With this we get to the
subject of usability for preschoolers.

Usability for preschooler websites
2 GOLDEN RULES:

1. AT LEAST respect common universal usability rules. What confuses adults will certainly confuse young kids.
2. Don’t base your assumptions upon how you imagine children are supposed to behave, or on your
experiences with your own child. Test your solution with a number of kids, in presence of an adult, letting the
children say their thoughts out loud. Test your interface with kids. Kids reactions are UNPREDICTABLE.

Illustration of unpredictability : There is a nice story of a researcher,
putting a line of a number of smarties in front of a child, and a longer
one, only having the same amount of smarties, asking, ‘which line of
smarties would you like to have’. The child chose the longest line, not
because it was longer, but as it said ‘because it has the red one’.

Testing is the only way to make sure that your interface is understood as it was intended.

The typical problems in usability that occur now on preschoolers, are the same ones that occurred 10 years ago
on the 6-8 age group.

2 important researches have been done :

• Usability Goeroe Jakob Nielsen just did a ﬁ rst big research on usability with preschoolers, available since
last month. It includes a series of very concrete tips of what to do and what not to do on childrens’ websites,
based upon empirical research and analysis of childrens’ websites.

• Johanna Gelderblom has made up a very interesting set of guidelines based upon childrens’ development
and existing literature on children’s technology. This document is freely downloadable on the internet.



Some examples of usability issues and guidelines for preschoolers or young kids in general:
• Make navigation icons based on ‘real life’, understandable for preschoolers, and test this. E.g. an image of
an ear is a clearer symbol for ‘sound’ than a loudspeaker. An open door will be clearer as an exit-symbol
than a stoplight. Animated icons can help the child to understand the meaning of it.

• Use big boxed buttons to compensate poor mouse control. Below: image of cursor movements when
targetting a button with the mouse, at different ages.

adult age 5 age 4

• Preschoolers are ‘mine-sweeping’ the screen, they follow no logical consistant main path for viewing the
page and clicking on links.
• Multiple navigation is too confusing.
• They don’t use the back button of navigator
• Avoid scrolling (only with preschoolers). Older kids now accept scrolling, but preschoolers don’t understand
how to use scrollbars. E.g. below: alternative to scrolling from Kido’z.

• Bury links for adults or other age groups in pages that are difﬁcult to reach for the preschooler, e.g. small text
links in the footer. Retain a consistent user experience for the preschooler, adapted to his age.



• Use audio instructions, but be aware that the preschooler will not retain those. The audio instruction should
be repeated at the moment the user needs it. Short phonic stimuli like beeps are even only kept in the short
memory for 2 seconds.
• Provide immediate feedback on errors, helping preschoolers to learn from their experiences: children do
learn quickly from previous actions.
• Point and click movements are easier than drag-and-drop movements of objects (e.g. colouring tool).
• It should be easy for a preschooler to go directly to his favourite activity, and not force him to go through a
long activity path fi rst.
• Avoid the usage of arrow keys for a preschooler. They will prefer to click with the mouse.
• Reduce the number of buttons and choices, and always make sure those are above the fold.
• Take into account that they won’t distinguish your advertising banners from the rest of your site.

Advertising online towards preschoolers
What’s the use of targeting kids in the fi rst place?
Research confi rmed the fact that kids infl uence mom’s purchases. Advertising defi nitely infl uences the kids, who
then infl uence mum. Babies are requesting brands as soon as they can speak.
How are ads interpreted by preschoolers?

• Marketers are increasingly trying to blur the line between advertising and
content, so it’s not suprising that kids cannot distinguish between the two.
• I have this nice example of my own preschooler child, who is exceptionnally
aware of advertising because of my job, when asked, ‘Is this man always telling
the full truth’ answers: ‘No, I suppose he might sometimes not know very well
himself and make a mistake when he explains about this product’.

Is this the marketer’s dream? Not necessarily!
• The content behind an ad may not be appropriate (e.g. containing a lot of text, or not what they expected,
cfr. illustration below of ad leading to text page).
• They will feel frustrated and cheated.
• This will refl ect upon the brand/product and upon the original site, which they will leave.

Norman Nielsen Group gives some recommendations to avoid this effect, one of them is that matching ads to
content will lead to less frustration.



Legal framework & ethical considerations
Some remarks about advertising to kids in general:
• There is a lobby against targeting too young kids
• Unability to decript the publicitary character of advertising
• Unwanted content
• Lack of clear regulation, esp. after the ‘5 minutes rule’ was abolished in Belgium (2006).
Since 2007: a code of conduct concerning kids advertising was accepted (e.g. no violence in kids
advertisements).

Computer/television/screen usage:
Not everybody happy, and a lot of research has been done about the consequences of computer usage by
young children, with as main attention points:
• Obesitas
• Social skills
• Attention span problems such as ADHD,…
• Lack of motherly affection (screen apps as nanny)
• Screen addiction: Example of drawing of kid of ‘the ideal bedroom of the future’
But for all this, different studies show contradictory results and some even prove that computer usage is positive for
developing social skills.

Kids online ethical concerns:
The EU has a big research project about this, the EU ‘Kids Online’ project (“Enhancing knowledge regarding
European children’s use, risk and safety online”), lead by Sonia Livingstone. The latest report focusses on children
aged 9 to 16.

Some of the issues:
• Safety
• Privacy
• Unwanted content
• Advertising
• Cyber-bullying
• Parental control
• Children submitting internet content as their own for homework
• Online proﬁ les of kids created by parents against the kids’
consent (lifetime effect, digital footprint that cannot be erased)
• Etc….!

Often there is ‘self-regulation’ to comply with ‘strictest interpretation of rules’, certainly within multinationals
operating under different regulations, as this is a sensitive matter, especially where it concerns privacy and
capture of children’s personal data.



Digital mums
As said, mums and preschoolers are together in the purchasing decision process… The kids infl uence is the biggest
in the earliest years, losing more and more importance until the child turns 5. From then on, the infl uence remains
stable for a number of years.
But we will now have a look at some ways to target the mums themselves directly.

The gen Y mums are the fi rst to have grown up digitally themselves, they will be educating in the coming years
a generation of kids that grew up from birth so to speak with the internet. Their mums have a completely digital
lifestyle, and internet is available in more than 9 out of 10 of those households. From the coming years on, due to
the media consumption of this generation of mothers, the primary medium through which you could infl uence the
purchase decisions of a mum will be online.

One very good way to reach digital mums is through newsletters:
Digital mums really embrace newsletters. A US research from Cafemum and Razorfi sh found that 80% of mums look
forward to offers and info on preferred brands via email.
This goes up to 85% when coupon offers are expected in the mailbox.

A second very good way to reach digital mums is through their social networks:
As to their so valued ‘me-time’, Gen X and Gen Y mothers mention as a favourite way to spend: Facebook with
39% before reading magazines (31%). Mums on Facebook are 20% more present than average adults.

Moms are looking to social networks for advice and information, not just on life issues but on purchasing decisions.
Moms are the ultimate word of mouth champions: Babycenter measured that pregnant & new mums have the
highest amounts of conversations and mentions of brands.

• Build word of mouth components into your campaigns
• Encourage participation, collaboration, contribution
• Make it easy to share.



References & further reading

About the cognitive and emotional development of preschoolers

Weaving a Library Web. A Guido to Designing Children’s websites. Helene Blowers. Robin Bryan. ©2004
by the American Library Association.

Emotional Development in Preschool Age Children - By C. Seefeldt|B.A. Wasik - Pearson Allyn Bacon
Prentice Hall

Cognitive Development in Preschoolers - By C. Seefeldt|B.A. Wasik - Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall

Designing for children 101. Shelley-Ann J. West, 2009.

About the offer for kids on the internet

The World Wide Web for Kids & Parents - Viraf Mohta

Lily Miller -5 year old- explains the iPod and the internet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-
f5XQHooW8

Internetﬁlters. Is er een browser voor kinderen? on Pepermunt.net

About the electronic media usage of preschoolers

Zero to Six. Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers. Menlo Park, CA: The Henry
J. Kaiser Family Foundation Fall 2003.

Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers. Menlo Park, CA: The Henry J. Kaiser
Family Foundation 2005.

Digital Childhood: Electronic Media and Technology Use Among Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers.
Elizabeth A. Vandewater, PhD - Victoria J. Rideout, MA - Ellen A. Wartell PhD - Xuan Huang, MA - June H.
Lee, PhD - Mi-suk Shim, PhD. in PEDIATRICS Vol. 119 No. 5 May 2007.

Technology and young children: How 4-7 year olds perceive their own use of computers - Susan
McKenney & Joke Voogt. Published in Journal Computers in Human Behavior archive Volume 26 Issue 4,
July, 2010.

The Digital Life of the Preschool Child What Parents and Teachers Need to Know - Louise S. Pavia, PhD
Youngstown State University, Ohio - Mary F. Swanson, EdD - Northeastern State University, Oklahoma

Handbook of Children and the Media - Dorothy G. Singer

Kids & Media / Design Analysis. Spring 2006. Bernard, King, McGaw, Paradis, Tallacksen.



About usability for preschooler websites

Nielsen Norman Group Report: Usability of Websites for Children: Design Guidelines for Targeting Users
Aged 3–12 Years. Second Edition. Sep. 2010.

Designing technology for Young Children: Guidelines Grounded in a Literature Investigation on Childe
Development and Children’s Technology - by J.H. Gelderblom. June 2008.

Designing User Experiences for Children. By Heather Nam. Published: May 17, 2010 on www.uxmatters.
com

Interaction Design and Children. Foundation and Trends® in Human-Computer Interaction, vol 1, no4,
pp 277-392, 2007. By Juan Pablo Hourcade.

Drag-and-drop versus point-and-click mouse interaction styles for children. by Kori M. Inkpen. Editor
Jonathan Grudin (One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA) - Publisher ACM New York, NY, USA

Ten Design Lessons from the Literature on Child Development and Children’s Use of Technology. Heléne
Gelderblom and Paula Kotzé. June, 2008. IDC 2009 Papers.

Uden, L.,Dix, A., Iconic Interfaces for Kids on the Internet. In: (eds.): Proceedings of IFIP WorldComputer
Congress, August 2000. Beijing, 2000, 279-286.

Being Playful – learning from children. Alan Dix

About advertising online towards preschoolers (see also next chapter)

McNeal, J. & Yeh, C. (1993, June). Born to Shop. American Demographics, pp 34-39.

What Kids Buy and Why: The Psychology of Marketing to Kids - Daniel Acuff

The Kids Market: Myths & Realities - James U. McNeal

Born to Buy: The Commercialised Child and the New Consumer Culture - Juliet Schor

Notes about Marketing to Babies and Toddlers. As-Sunnah newsletter, Vol. 2 Issue No. 3

Food and beverage advertising to children. When is a child a child? - World Federation of Advertisers.
July 2007.

Qrius - Leefwereld van kinderen - Euroforum congres Trends in kidsmarketing Efteling, 22 mei 2007

About the legal framework and the ethical considerations (see also previous chapter and About the electronic
media usage of preschoolers)

Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet - Kathryn C.
Montgomery

Children And the Internet: Great Expectations, Challenging Realities - Sonia Millwood Livingstone



Kids Online: Opportunities and Risks For Children - Sonia M. Livingstone

Hood, D. (2000). Is advertising to kids wrong? Marketers respond. Kidscreen, November 15

Ga Ga Goo Goo.. 73% Of Toddlers Are Digitally Active. By Toby Leftly. On www.techi.com.

Linn, S. (2004). Consuming Kids: The hostile takeover of childhood. New York: Free Press, pp. 41-60

Healy, M. (2004). Young TV watchers may be at risk for later attention problems. Los Angeles Times. May 24.

Alliance for Childhood. (2000). Fools Gold: A critical look at computers in our childhood. College Park, MD: Alliance for
Childhood.

A Guide To Child Safety Online - Raising Kids on the Internet - Aldric Chang.

Je kind op het internet. Erno Mijland.

Resources — Commercialism & Children - http://www.mediaed.org/wp/commchildren-resources

About the digital mums

Digital mom - A two-part report published by Razorﬁsh and Cafémom.
Mom WOM. New Insights into Word of Mouth Conversations Among Mothers of Young Children. - April 23, 2008. Keller Fay
Group. © BabyCenter LLC.

Understanding the modern mom. Oct 2009, David Stutts, Luckie.

Marketing to Moms: Make Sure to Send Her An Email. On Whymomsrule.com, A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding
America’s Number One Consumer Group, Moms. By David Bohan.

Marketing to Moms: Moms, Twitter and Your Brand. On Whymomsrule.com, A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding

WhyMomsRule.com Poll: Insights on Moms’ “Me Time”. On Whymomsrule.com, A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding

Marketing to the New Super Consumer Mom & Kid - Tim Coffey

WhyMoms Rule.com 2010 Generations Survey - David Bohan.

Unicast - What Women Want From the Web Report - Summer 2010

Trillion-dollars Moms: Marketing To A New Generation Of Mothers - Maria T. Bailey

Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World - Don Tapscott

Moms Who Blog: A Marketing Powerhouse - By Debra Aho Williamson. October 2010.



Marketing to Moms: Mom Is More Likely to ‘Say Something Nice’ When Sharing Product Information. On Whymomsrule.
com, A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding America’s Number One Consumer Group, Moms. By Shari Day.

Marketing to Moms: Moms Rule the Internet and Traditional Media. On Whymomsrule.com, A Marketer’s Guide to
Understanding America’s Number One Consumer Group, Moms. By David Bohan.

Kidﬂuence: The Marketers Guide to Understanding and Reaching Generation Y-Kids, Tween S, and Teens - Anne
Sutherland

sMarketing to Moms: Getting Down to the Nitty-Gritty. On Whymomsrule.com, A Marketer’s Guide to Understanding

Engaging Moms with Social Media. Prepared by: Lauren Candito, Social Media Solutions



Preschoolers
and their mums
on the web

Gerda Van Damme | Dreammachine



Preschoolers & their mums on the web

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