YNOT – Here’s a shocker: Kids lie to their parents about what they do online. Moreover, more than half of children ages six to 17 delete their web-browsing history so their parents can’t check up on them.The revelations resulted from a survey of 500 children whose families are customers of U.K. broadband internet service provider TalkTalk. Among the youths who participated, 62 percent said they lie to their parents about their online activities. Fifty-three percent admitted clearing their web tracks.
The study’s authors concluded “many children are getting away with behavior online that they wouldn’t get away with in the real world, largely because of their parents’ lack of understanding and awareness of their internet habits and of safety precautions,” Britain’s Telegraph reported.
The survey also discovered one in four kids has sent and/or received email containing pornography and other “inappropriate materials,” one in 20 has communicated with a stranger via webcam and one in 50 has met in person with a stranger they first contacted online.
The survey’s results fueled the U.K. government’s resolve to ensure every schoolchild receives instruction about internet dangers and how to avoid them. In December, officials launched the “Click Clever, Click Safe” campaign to do exactly that as a compulsory part of public school curriculum beginning in 2011.
The program, a cooperative venture between the government and the U.K. Council for Child Internet Safety, was designed by child psychologist and broadcast personality Tanya Byron, who led the TalkTalk research. The UKCCIS is composed of more than 140 international organizations including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, and it has been tasked with drawing up a “Digital Code” that is expected to be in place by next summer.
Among the draft proposals for the Click Clever, Click Safe campaign are guidelines suggesting all companies with a web presence clearly define on their homepages the rules for website usage. In addition, websites are encouraged to provide children with instructions for responding when they encounter something offensive online. At present, the guidelines are not expected to become mandatory.
“It’s crucial that parents educate themselves about what’s going on online and what their kids are doing there,” Byron told the Telegraph, apparently unaware of the irony inherent in designing a program that addresses only one end of the equation — and the savvier end, at that.
