SPECIAL REPORT: Guiding children through the online playground
MANY a teenager got a smartphone for Christmas. It is the “must have” accessory in their eyes, with many competing to have what they think is the best, or arguing whether Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S3 trumps the iPhone 5.
The debate has long raged as to the suitability of mobile phones for children, with some parents expressing a concern as to the young age from which children are constantly attached to the handsets.
The proliferation of smartphones has introduced a new and much more insidious element into that debate. The rapid development of the technology means that, with one tap, the teenager has often unfettered access to all aspects of the internet.
EU Kids Online, which studies the internet activities of children in 25 European countries, recently published its National Perspectives research document. That found that 46% of Irish children go online using their phones. The European average is 31%.
The survey threw up a number of worrying trends about children’s online exposure, including that:
* 15% of 11-to-16-year-olds have received peer-to-peer “sexual messages or images” and 3% said they had sent or posted such messages;
* 14% of 9-to-16-year-olds have, in the past 12 months seen images online that are “obviously sexual — for example showing people naked or having sex”;
* 6% of 9-to-16-year-olds had been sent nasty or hurtful messages online and 3% had sent such messages to others;
* 21% of 11-to-16-year-olds had been exposed to one or more types of potentially harmful user-generated content — hate (12%), pro-anorexia (10%), self-harm (7%), drug taking (7%), and suicide (5%).
Obviously much of the exposures listed above may have been through a computer to which the child had access and was not necessarily through a smartphone.
However, the danger is that while parents are becoming more “internet aware” by being vigilant to what their child is accessing on the home computer they are not, in some cases, as savvy to the fact that all the same material is available on their child’s phone.
The old argument that “put the computer in the living room” just will not work anymore.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/a-dangerous-playground-218874.html