Fly My Byte

A survey into the internet access for children and teenagers has brought forth the fact that a large percentage of this age group has internet access in their rooms and they use it even when there are no adults in the room.

The recent UK Children’s Media Literacy interim report published by Ofcom suggests that around 35% of 12-15 year-old children have net access in their own rooms and more than half of them admit using internet on their own.

Though younger children have lesser freedom, still one in every six children of 8-11 year age group have internet in their bedrooms, and more than one-third claim that they use internet on their own. Interestingly, around 21% of children in the 5-7 age group say that they use internet without adult supervision.

Children are however not conducting the basic security check on the sites they are visiting. These checks involve finding secure padlock systems, accessing updated information, or finding out whether peers and friends have visited the website or not. However, children are learning to use social networking sites in a way that their profiles are visible only to family and friends. The number of teenagers who use the privacy settings on social networking sites has increased from 59% to 60%.

In 2007, the number of children accessing internet from their rooms was 20% for age group of 12-15, while that for 8-11 years old it was hardly 9%. Irrespective of the increasing worries about the same, not even half the parents try to filter the content their children can access.

In this respect, Ofcom has issued a guide on controlling and filtering content on digital TV and internet for children. The guide also suggests parents to have a positive interaction with the children regarding how they can use the internet safely.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 10:15 am and is filed under Internet Telecommunication Resources, Security Solutions, Stuff for Kids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.