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Parents should address concerns about their children’s online activity “early and without fear” – says an internet safety expert who was a speaker at NetSafe’s conference “Our community: Our challenge” which took place in Wellington this week.
However, it is important for parents “not to overreact, to try to calm down a little bit, and not let fear get in the way of reasoning. This after all is their future – we are never going to go back to the 1950s … so parents have to find that balance, “Stephen Balkam says.
He says a study in the USA has found large differences between what parents know about their teens’ social networking use on sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, and the level of monitoring their children knew of.
It found 70 per cent of parents checked their teens’ text messages on their phones but 70 per cent of teens were unaware of it, and while about 84 per cent of parents said they monitored online usage, just 39 per cent of teens were aware they were being spied on.
Just 14 per cent of teens thought their parents were well informed about what they were doing on Twitter and while 95 per cent of teens reported feeling safe online, 94 per cent of parents disagreed with them.
Source
- The New Zealand Herald
- Image: 3News
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