According to the recent studies, the time kids spend surfing the Internet nowadays surpasses their parent’s online activities. The numbers show that half of all network users are children aged 8-13.
More of them start using their portable devices (such as smartphones and tablets) to go online by each day. If 5-10 years ago the only thing they could use to access the network was their desktop home PC – now Wi-Fi connection is available as almost at every street café. The most popular activities for children online are found to be search engines, social networks and gaming.
But highly advanced computer technologies brought not only the good, but a source of trouble as well – some people may use Internet to get advantage of your kids. Many parent (65%) tend to think that their children spend hours on the net only for the benefit of doing the homework. While from a kid’s perspective the knowledge Internet can give is not that important as downloading music/video, emailing, chatting and other fun-related activities. ¾ of all kids say that they are online to chat with friends and start new relationships while 15% claim that after some time in virtuality, they are eager to meet their new acquaintances in real life.
The studies produced the following fascinating statistics:
- 49% of children who go online frequently have been harassed at least once in their virtual experiences, with 13% of children receiving such sexually inappropriate messages on a regular basis. Other cases find the offenders among Internet uses who send nasty emails to their chosen “victim” (trolling, cyber-bullying);
- 19% of the surveyed have met their online acquaintances, 12% of they gone to such meetings on their own, 8% have not bring this to anyone’s knowledge.
- 23% of children have seldom visited porn sites, 11% more are doing it regularly, 48% of kids have browsed web pages showing violence, 18% are familiar with racist content, 31% are chatting about sex while 61% of children are tend to access internet alone, without asking any permission from their parents.
More than that, many parents seem to be blissfully unaware of the fact their child could face pop-up pornography screens simply browsing through pages with free music/video downloads. It is not the only problem – we all know that teens are obsessed with chatting on various message boards where users can easily hide behind avatars. How to make sure the real encounter with a virtual “friend” is safe enough for our children?
Their curiosity can lead much further than we would want to – online world is full of vandalism, racism, sex, violence and suicidal references either of which may cause the actions on behalf of your child that could damage his physical and mental health.
Nowadays the huge amount of web pages, emails and file-sharing programs offer the opportunity to download music, film and files free of charge. Even though they may seem harmless the frightening percentage of such “offers” are packed with dangerous viruses and over malicious software that can ruin your PC’s safety and hack confidential data.
Any precocious methods are far less complicated and expensive than dealing with unwanted consequences so start protecting your child only today with Safe Lagoon.
– Safe Lagoon Team
