Children Get Product Info Online

More than four out of 10 children ages 6 to 11 have visited a Website they saw or heard about in a commercial or advertisement, according to a 2008 MRI survey.

MRI said almost 10.7 million young consumers visited company sites after viewing ads. More than one-quarter of them were 6 to 7 years old, one-third were age 8 or 9 and 40.2% were 10 or 11 years old.

"MRI data clearly indicate that the younger set is pretty responsive to a 'please visit our Web site' suggestion," said Anne Marie Kelly, senior vice president at MRI, in a statement.

Children who were prompted by ads to visit Websites were 48% more likely than the average US child to go online daily. They were also 41% more likely to have their own e-mail address, 40% more likely to use instant messaging and more than one-third more likely to download music.

Internet usage is increasingly a given among children. More than one-half of 5-to-8-year-olds surveyed with parental consent by Yankelovich for Scholastic in June 2008 were online. This is especially true as children enter their tween years—usually defined as starting at age 8 or 9. Fully 85% of 9-to-11-year-olds in the same study used the Internet. By ages 15 to 17, Internet usage was near-ubiquitous among the teens surveyed, at 95%.