• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, July 4, 2014

According to the sixth wave of LMX Family, The Ipsos MediaCT annual study of attitudes and behaviors of families with kids aged 0-12 years old, media and technology are a ubiquitous part of life today for families with young children. They help with the challenges of growing responsibilities and growing up, and enable families to better connect to and bond with each other. The emergence of new technologies and new media platforms provide new dimensions to traditional family dynamics shaping the consumers of tomorrow.

The continued proliferation of kid-owned, internet-enabled, mobile devices has become a significant game changer, growing over 250% since 2011. With greater than six-in-ten kids owning these devices, they are empowered to program their own content selections—whatever, whenever and wherever they want, says the report.

Donna Sabino, leader of the Ipsos Kids & Family Center of Excellence, says “This is a powerful new construct. This young audience can now sample a wide variety of content categories without having to change gadgets—video viewing now competes against music listening, social networking, shopping and gaming all on the same device,”

There was considerable year-over-year growth in kids’ online and app-based activities across devices, and parents in 2014 were significantly more willing to pay for online content for their children compared to last year, says the report.

The impact of connected devices was also evident in how parents reported they now consumed media with their kids. According to the data, there is significant growth over last year in the percentage of parents who say “family media time means everyone is in the same room but consuming different content.”

In parallel, there were also significant year-over-year increases in families’ use of online video—both free and paid SVOD services. This was particularly true of Millennial parents. Sabino continues by saying that “…parents are heading online to satisfy the content desires of their kids… teaching their children how and where to access entertainment and information… establishing behaviors that can last a lifetime… ”

The Usage, Attitudes & Aspirations module of the study captures the audience’s current and future ownership of a wide range of devices; their expenditure on a range of media content; and their participation in social media and other activities. Through LMX Family studies, one can see the relevance and role of emerging media for this both kids and parents, says the report.

For additional information from Ipsos, and access to the complete study, please visit here.