Do Modern Kids Surf Safely?

Posted on Sep 27 2012 - 6:56pm by Robert

Do you remember the days when kids had to play with any old toy or game they could get hold of? Well, it seems like the days of low tech dolls and jumpers for goalposts are long gone.

A recent survey by internet security firm McAfee has revealed that an incredible 82% of 5 year olds either own or use a device which is enabled for internet access. However, this statistic sits a little uneasily with the one which reveals that more than two thirds of parents in the UK think that the internet is more dangerous than it was 5 years ago and over half of them think that youngsters don’t know how to use the internet correctly.

No Supervision for the Majority

Despite this, around half of the 2.000 parents questioned on the matter haven’t done anything about making sure that their children can’t get access to things they shouldn’t be looking at. In fact, 60% of parents allow their child to go on the internet without any sort of supervision in place either.

25% of 5 year olds have been left to go online alone, and this figure rises to over 50% when we look at 7 year olds. 30% of kids under the age of 10 have come across pornographic images which surfing online.

Perhaps most surprising of all is the fact that a third of the parents surveyed think that it isn’t their job to look after the safety of their children when they are using the internet. They think that the media should be doing the job of letting their kids know how to use the internet responsibly.

What do you think? Should parents be doing more to protect their internet using kids?

1 Comment so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. p2paaa September 28, 2012 at 2:26 am - Reply

    If you need advanced parental control that watches everything kids do on the web (such as Facebook) , as well as filters nasty websites, and does linguistic analysis detect dangerous behavior –
    such as online predators or cyberbullys –
    check out McGruff SafeGuard's Parental Control system:
    http://www.GoMcgruff.com

    You might remember McGruff “The Crime Dog” – Take A Bite Out of Crime – from your youth.

    For FREE iPad/iPhone parental control, check out http://www.GoMcGruff.com/browser

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