WASHINGTON, DC — The results of a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project provides hope parents that parents will police their children’s online usage instead of expecting digital publishers to “dumb down” their content so everything online is appropriate for children.According to the national survey of adults, the internet and cell phones have become central components of modern family life. Results indicate that households with a married couple and minor children are more likely than other household types — such as single adults, homes with unrelated adults, or couples without children — to have cell phones and use the internet.

Eighty-nine percent of traditional nuclear families own multiple cell phones, the report “Networked Families” revealed, and nearly half own three or more mobile devices. Sixty-six percent of married-with-children households have a high-speed broadband internet connection at home, well above the national average of 52-percent for all households, and 58-percent of the households contain two or more desktop or laptop computers.

What’s perhaps most striking about the survey’s results is that the high rates of technology ownership affect family life. In particular, cell phones allow family members to stay more regularly in touch even when they are not physically together. Moreover, many members of married-with-children households view online material together.

“A lot of families treat the internet as a place for shared experiences,” said Tracy Kennedy, co-author of the report. “They don’t just withdraw from the family to their own computer for private screen time. They often say, ‘Hey — look at this!’ to others in the household.

Some 52 -percent of internet users who live with a spouse and one or more children go online with another person at least a few times a week, according to the report. Another 34-percent of such families have shared screen moments at least occasionally.

“Some analysts have worried that new technologies hurt family togetherness, but we see that technology allows for new kinds of connectedness built around cell phones and the internet,” Kennedy said. “Family members touch base with each other frequently with their cell phones, and they use those phones to coordinate family life on the fly during their busy lives.”

The study on which the report is based also revealed that 70-percent of couples in which both partners own a cell phone contact each other daily to say hello or chat, while 54-percent of couples who have one or no cell phones do this at least once a day. Sixty-four percent of couples in which both partners own a cell phone contact each other daily to coordinate their schedules; 47-percent of couples who have one or no cell phones do this at least once a day. In addition, 42-percent of parents contact their children on a daily basis using a cell phone, making cell phones the most popular communications tool between parents and children.

When asked if the internet and cell phones made family life different for their current family compared with the family in which they grew up, 25-percent said their family today is closer than their family when they were growing up. Eleven percent said their family today is not as close as families in the past, and 60-percent said new technologies have not made their family any more or less close than their family in the past.

However, the benefits of the internet and cell phones are somewhat counterbalanced in some families by their contribution to the speed of modern life and their role in blurring the lines between “work” and “home” life. Eleven percent of employed internet users said the internet has increased the amount of time they spend working from the office, and 19-percent said it has increased the amount of time they spend working from home.

“Families are becoming networks,” posited Barry Wellman, a professor at the University of Toronto and co-author of the study. “Each household member can be her own communications hub, and that changes things inside and outside the household. Family members are neither isolated individuals nor traditional actors in Fun with Dick and Jane homes. Rather, their households are active sites of the interplay of individual activity and family togetherness.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the study also found that television continues to lose ground to the internet among connected Americans, particularly among young adults. While 74-percent of all adults watch TV nearly every day, just 58-percent of 18-29 year olds watch TV almost every day and 29-percent said they now watch less TV as a result of the internet.

However, that revelation does not correlate with increased social isolation among the young. The survey’s results indicated internet users socialize just as frequently as non-users. Indeed, even intense internet users (those who go online from home several times a day) are no less likely to socialize with friends than those who go online less frequently and those who do not go online at all.