Abstract

This study was carried out to investigate the utilization status of internet and dietary information by gender (boys : 442, girls : 461) in school children (total : 903). The results were summarized as follows. The most of children used internet regularly (98.1%) and major purpose of using were mentioned as 'game (39.0%)' and 'social intercourse (49.5%)'. The duration of internet use was '< 2hours (80.9%)'. They used internet mainly at 'home (88.8%)', and favorite search engines were 'Yahoo (54.2%)' and 'Daum (31.1%)'. The searching experience on dietary information was from only 35.6% of subjects mainly 'for homework (39.6%)' and 'for health (36.9%)'. The satisfaction degree of searched information was 'high (79.5%)'. Dissatisfactory reasons of internet site for dietary information were pointed out to be 'bring little interest (28.9)', 'difficult contents (19.2%)', and 'poor information (18.2%)'. Only fifteen % of subjects had experience of nutrition counseling using internet, and purpose of counseling was mainly 'for homework (51.4%)' and 'for health problem (24.3%)'. The problems for nutritional counseling site were pointed out to be 'difficult answer content (31.7%)', 'insincere answer (28.6%)' and 'poor answer content (25.4%)'. They acquire information of nutrition and health management mainly through 'internet (43.7%)'. 'Growth and nutrition (28.3%)', 'improvement in studying ability (13.8%)', 'right weight control (13.3%)' and 'cooking (12.8%)' were most frequently asked information, They had a preference for 'game (40.5%)', 'animation (29.9%)' and 'quiz (18.1%)' as learning method tools. The favorite site color was 'green (51.3%)'. The results of this study showed that although the internet use was very high, they used internet to search dietary information very seldom. Therefore, the information donor should find out what is the optimal tool, what kind of dietary information was needed for school children.

• Keywords: school children; internet; dietary information