Parents Show Little Trust in Children Online Behaviour
The online world offers a large variety of information which can easily be accessed and used by anyone, including children. Today, youngsters tend to be even more active than adults on the web. They have profiles in various social networks, they blog, they chat, they post pictures and videos and who knows what else.
Most parents are aware of their kids activities and in their efforts to protect family’s privacy, they turn into spies or privacy offenders. This was recently confirmed by a new report published by Digital Center. The study is called ‘The Digital Future Project 2013: Surveying the Digital Future, Year Eleven.’ The purpose of the report is to examine opinion and actions related to the use or the non-use of web technology. Part of the study focused on children and parents as Internet users and their online habits.
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According to the study, the majority of parents today do not trust their children when it comes to their online behaviour. About 70% of all adults who participated in the survey shared that they monitor their kids’ profiles and activity on the social networks. Moreover, nearly half the parents were found to actually have the password to their children’s online social profiles and that they do access them.
Only 30% of parents state that they do not monitor their children online behavior. A big part of them (28%) do not do that since they have complete trust in their children. Another 12% said that they are curious about their children online behavior, but are not monitoring it since that would show lack of trust. Less are the parents who can’t use social networks (9%) or those who do not really have the time to (7%).
The study has also discovered that, despite the rising popularity of the Internet and PC and mobile devices, kids still tend to spend more time watching TV. Around 41% of the adults who have children report that kids are watching too much television. Only 32% of them believe that children are browsing the web more than they should. That is a nearly 10% rise compared to 2009. Surprisingly, 65% of all adults are fine with the amount to time children spend online. Nevertheless, that is 6% lower than the figures from four years ago.
Among the findings of the report, is that now kids access the web from their schools (77%) nearly as much as they do from their home (79%). While 61% of the children see that the Internet is very or extremely important in their schoolwork, 48% of the parents shared that the web did not affect the grades of their kids. Other 13% have found that the online world has hurt the school performance of their children.
Apparently, parents and kids are often differing in their opinion for the Internet. That gap is most likely here to stay.
