Long-term study of safe internet use of young children
Valcke, M., De Wever, B., Van keer, H., & Schellens, T. (2011).
This study was completed 6 years ago in Belgium, and focused on contact risks and content risks. It included 10,000 children from the years 2005-2009. The study aimed to give a “... structured overview of Internet risks and summarizes approaches to foster safe Internet behavior.” They also state that “... children’s internet usage change continuously.” and this is important to note and a reason for my study as well.
“... a continuous increase in internet access at home can be observed. At a global level, an increase of 342.2% in Internet access is noticed since 2000.” Until 2009. “Internet access has increased with 250.3% since 2000...” 11 years.
“92.8% of the children between 12 and 18 years old have access to the internet at home.”
“... increase in Internet access in a separate room such as a study or bedroom, without parent supervision.” Why? Are parents less concerned?
“Children know more about computer and the Internet as compared to their parents.” What implications does this have?
“The current generation of youngsters is also the first generation that has not known a world without computers and the internet.”
“The level of Internet access, the nature of the user experience, and the impact of local policies and legislation seem to differ widely between countries and continents.” So localized studies are necessary.
INTERNET USAGE OF YOUNG CHILDREN:
Reasons why young children use the internet: Entertainment, education and edutainment.
“... the focus on gaming is dominant in 10-12 year olds and decreases after this age.” What type of gaming?
“The focus shifts to chatting, social networking and commercial usage from the age of 11 years on. Social networking dominates all types of Internet usage from 13 years on.”
“... older boys used the Internet to a longer extent.” Compared to?
“... girls use the internet significantly more for social networking or chatting; boys tend to focus more on games and entertainment-related activities.” Gender differences - why do they exist?
“This also implies that measures taken at a certain moment in time may no longer be that adequate when newer Internet applications have been adopted.” Important!
“Content risks are related to the exposure of children to content that might be harmful.”
This content includes: “... images or text reflecting pornography, violence, racism, or hate.”
“40.7% of children between 10 and 12 were exposed to such shocking content.” (In 2008).
“...57% children-teenagers accessing the Internet once a week, did already witness pornographic content.” “... children have access to the Internet pornography at the age of 11.” Why at this age and not before? Do they want it then?
“...25% of youngsters indicated being disturbed due to the nature of this type of content...”
“...high proportions of teenagers viewed - on purpose - pornographic, violent, or racist online content.”
“Less research is available focusing on other types of harmful content such as suicide websites, eating disorders, and drug abuse.” So maybe a good area to research.
“The integrity of the information distributed via the internet is rarely questioned by children.” Why so?
“Only about 33% if the children between 9 and 19 years old learned to verify the reliability of Internet information.”
Examples include cyber-bullying, sexual solicitation and threats to privacy.
“Contact risks seem to be related to specific types of Internet usage, such as blogging, chat room us, and instant messaging.”
“Cyber-bullying builds on the abusive use of email, instant messaging, chat rooms, or other communication types to bully, intimidate, threaten or insult others.”
“...one can hide his/her own identity is an important reason for the internet being a favorite bullying tool.” So anonymity is important.
“...54% of 12-13 year olds had been a victim of cyber-bullying. Up to 15% admitted to be an offender of cyber-bullying.” These are high numbers. Do kids think it’s okay? 2007 - what’s changed?
“Insults or threats are reported the most by victims, followed by sending misleading information, spreading rumors about someone, and fooling around with someone’s email or changing passwords.”
“internet-based sexual solicitation has become more and more frequent due to the use of webcam technologies and instant messaging.”
“...27% of 10-17 year old youngsters experienced sexual solicitation via the internet...” What did they do about it?
“... children run a larger risk to pass personal details to other.” Why? “Up to 70% of the children felt easy about giving someone their home address or email address.” Are they not aware of the consequences?
“...26% of respondents did not know who they are chatting with.”
“A potential consequence of this loss in privacy is undesirable offline contact, harassment and/or abuse.”
“... users exerted more discretion in posting personal information at a later stage.” Why is this? what is “a later stage”? “...increase in experience, internet safety awareness, parent supervision, or other measures that are intended at the reduction of privacy risks.” Possible reasoning.
“... children are clearly at risk.”
“... 4% of their respondents reported attempted or actual offline contact.” (2002). “7.5% of children between 10 and 12 years old did already set up a meeting with an unknown person as a result of online contact.” (2008). Is this higher now?
“... some of these offline contacts are hardly risky if children meet with peers or same-age internet friends.” So not dangerous at all.
Grooming “... refers to adult offenders who develop an online relationship with young children and gain their trust.”
“14.6% of youngsters started online contact with strangers and the majority (84%) of these 59 youngsters met offline with the unknown person, and three reported having been assaulted.”
“Young children are approached via ‘gamevertising’.”
“... examples of such commercial exploitation, such as placing an order without consent, or games that are concealed sales offers.”
“... children nevertheless do not have the critical literacy to understand that “they like what they like” and easily follow the “suggestions” in the advertisement.”
“... parents do not fully understand potential commercial risks.” What exactly do they need to know to understand?
“... 13% of children of 9-13 years old realized that the aim of their favorite website is advertising. The majority of children thought the website aim was to entertain.”
“A rather hidden internet risk is the solicitation for background information of internet surfers.” So taking info from users.
“They are invited to respond to small surveys about their consumer behavior, their preferences, the extent to which they like a product.” Is there not ethics issues with this?
CONSEQUENCES OF UNSAFE INTERNET BEHAVIOR:
Some of the negative consequences of risky internet content include: aggression, fear, symptoms related to psychological trauma, negative self-image, identity confusion and emotional consequences.
“... one fourth of teenagers between 10 and 17 years old were upset due to exposure to harmful content.” “... 19% indicated they felt stressful during the days after the negative experience.”
“... a relationship between exposure of boys to sexual explicit content and their focus on females as lust objects.” So sexually explicit content can change behaviors in real life. “... correlations between exposure to sexual explicit content and attitudes about sex, respect for females, and the place of sex in a healthy relationship.”
“... 5% of the teenagers who felt being harassed via the internet also felt threatened or stressed (...) symptoms of a severe depression.”
“... significant positive relationship between a victim of cyber-bully and stress. Victims clearly felt less safe.”
“... 25% of teenagers who received a sexual solicitation via the internet were very upset, and expressed anxiety feelings.”
“The negative impact of offline contact (...) are hardly described in the literature.” So maybe an area to look into. “... higher risks related to their physical and socio-emotional health.”
TOWARDS SAFE INTERNET USE:
“... national governments installing a legislation to protect children.” What legislation is available in NZ?
The ‘Child Online Privacy Protection Act’: Is it valid in NZ?
“AN international legislative focus is needed: national laws can hardly tackle international illegal practices.” But still good to have.
There are four main lines for this:
Fighting illegal or harmful content by setting national hotline networks.
Fighting harmful content by promoting filter software.
Installation of the Safer Internet Forum, brining together political and non-governmental organizations to promote safe internet use.
Organization of large scale awareness campaigns.
Main objects for a good campaign:
Fostering awareness of children, parents and teachers about safe internet use/ behaviour.
Starting national contact points to report illegal or harmful online content, with a focus on child abuse and grooming.
Promotion of self-regulation initiatives.
Stimulating children to set up themselves a safer internet environment.
Developing knowledge acquisition of children and teenagers about safe internet use, internet risks and promote collaborative research.
Click Safe Campaign in UK: was this active in NZ too?
3 types of filter software: inclusion, exclusion and content filtering.
“... up to one third of parents installed filter softwares.” Were they free? Government provided? Will this amount still be the same?
“... 33% of the parents knew whether filter software was installed; 23% indicated they used monitoring software to check the surfing activities of their children; 20% of the parents was unaware of the purpose of filter software.”
“... the legislative actions installed in a number of countries that oblige schools to install filter software and to adopt Internet usage rules.” Does NZ have this legislation?
“... only 40% of the pupils confirmed that such rules have been established and communicated.” Why so low?
“Next to rules, schools can play an active role by introducing children to safer internet usage.”
“... despite school-invoked discussions about safe internet usage, children continued to adopt risky internet behavior.” Why? Rebellious?
“They also pointed out that this type of risky behavior might be part of the youth culture.” What is youth culture?
“... all authors stress the importance of this type of campaigns and actions. At the same time, little information was found about the impact of these approaches on the actual internet surfing behavior of young children.”
Offered a long-term perspective. A long-term cross-sectional research design study.
Wanted to find out “... whether newer generations of internet users reflect a safer internet usage profile.” So, do they?
the quality of internet usage.
“the nature of actual internet usage”
“the content risks and contact risks reflected in internet usage.”
“the extent to which parents and schools have implemented restrictive and/or active mediation measures and how this impacts (un)safe internet use.”
“... 10,000 pupils of the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade of 78 schools in Flanders were involved in this study.”
“A multi-stage sampling approach was adopted.”
“... a pupil section and a school principal section.” So from more than just one perspective. Why not teachers though?
“On a five or seven-point Likert scale, they could indicate to what extent they did agree or disagree with a specific statement.”
Also five answer categories.
“Informed consent was obtained of the legal guardians of the pupils through the school principal.” So this is how they dealt with ethics.
“The school principal filled out the specific version of the instrument during the session with the pupils.” Would the principal not be biased and answer questions to make the school sound better?
“The Unsafe Internet Usage Index (UIUI) was calculated by adding together indicators referring to internet contact and content risks. For each variable of the UIUI index, a respondent could give a 1 or a 0 score...”
“A sum-score was calculated overall these variables, resulting in a new UIUI variable (maximum 10). This implies that a high UIUI score reflects a high level of Internet risk behavior and thus unsafe internet use.”
- To what extent does internet usage of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders reflect unsafe internet use?
“Lower grades reflect a significantly higher level of risk behavior,” Due to personality? Rebelliousness?
“More and more children do not seem to know every person they are chatting with.”
“Children also seem to be less careful when it comes to passing address details to people online.”
“... the indicator “actually meeting someone face-to-face” is evidently a higher level risk.”
“Unsafe Internet Usage is also reflected in the extent youngsters are confronted with shocking content via the internet.”
- To what extent is there Internet Use Supervision at home and/or at school?
“...23.2% of all children reports never to be controlled and 23/6% reports to be hardly ever controlled, while accessing the internet.”
“...11.4% of the children reports never to be controlled and 10.2% reports to hardly ever while accessing the internet at school.”
“The reported level of parental control does not differ, depending on the grade level of the children.” You would think this would decrease with age.
- Is there a relationship between the level of control at home and at school and safe Internet use of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders?
“... teacher control is not a significant predictor of UIUI.”
“Parental control is hardly a negative predictor of risk behavior.”
“... low usage of the internet in view of school related activities.” and “... a balance between entertainment-orientated use to a more functional use of the internet.” and “... a large proportion is linked to social use...”
The study points out that even though there was a substantial amount of money put into awareness campaigns, the risk behavior did not decrease. Why though? Not targeting the ones with the risk behavior?
So not a decrease, but not increase either. Need to be aware that campaigns are making young people aware and remember (since they have to be told again and again), and “... that each new group of internet users has to be paid attention to.”
“... have to be aware of the fact that the nature of the internet changes.” So new research needs to be done to cover this.
“The growth in social network tools and applications that invite users to exchange (...) has resulted in a whole new setting that has to be considered when setting up safe Internet initiatives.”
“Awareness campaigns should focus on these new types of risks.”
“They offer - from a developmental psychology perspective - valuable “opportunities for the representation of the self for learning, for construction a wide circle of relationships, and the management of privacy and intimacy.” (p.75)” Livingstone and brake (2009). Psychological reasoning why the web is good.
“But they also stress the risks and refer to children-at-risk in this area and that a “children’s rights” framework should be developed, starting from a clear evidence-based policy base.”
“... both parental and teacher control did not increase during recent years and that supervision is not (yet) an important predictor of (un)safe internet usage.”
“On the contrary, despite all the awareness campaigns, we observed no increase in reported control over the years.”
“... parents and their children might differ in their sensitivity to parental supervision and that this can become a barrier to enforcement of Internet monitoring.” Perception?
“This calls for more research focusing on the responses of youngsters on Internet regulation.”
“... supervision approaches incorporating sitting with or checking on the child while being online, the use of filters, and control of the sites did not result in a decrease in the risk of attending a face-to-face meeting with people they met online.”
“... importance of setting clear rules (control), which is most effective when combined with a sufficient level of parental warmth.”
“... parents discussing Internet safety, made teenagers more Internet safety conscious.”
“... teens do not perceive parental presence in their online practices.” what does this mean and what impact does it have?
“Parental regulation interpretation seems to depend on the types of Internet usage.” Yet again, what does this mean?
“... a family installing a privacy policy framework, results in a reduction of privacy risks on the Internet.”
“... teenagers who engage very intensively in the social usage of the Internet, parental supervision is less adequate to reduce the Internet privacy-risks.” So can’t reduce the risk completely?
“New technologies challenge both the relationships and the pace at which regulations have to be developed.”
“... parents reporting a high Internet literacy level seem to trust their children and hardly regulate Internet usage.” Why? would they not realize the dangers more?
LIMITATION, DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH AND CONCLUSIONS:
Because of age of respondents, their reading level could reflect their responses. So older would be better.
“Though contact risks already have a larger weight in the UIUI index, future research should focus on developing a UIUI index that balances the different types of risk.” will be using some form of the index - may not need to balance if focus is on contact.
“... new questions, risks, and problems have to be incorporated in the study...” Why it is important to do new studies.
Future studies need to not focus on just children, but include schools, teachers and parents.
