|
24th Edition of
the Children Online Newsletter.
In this month's issue
of our newsletter we would like to share with our readers the
statistics we have collected during this academic year 2008 -
2009. Please keep in mind that these statistics reflect
what the children and teens report to us about their own
Internet behavior. They are not absolute values, but
more likely reflect generalizations and trends across age
groups. If anything, it is safe to assume that children
and teens are more involved in various Internet activities
than what they reported. We say this because our years
of experience working with children and teens on Internet
safety has taught us some valuable generalizations.
1.
Children and teens will under-report any activity in which
they think adults would disapprove of their
participation.
2. Whatever children and teens are doing
on the Internet this year, they will be doing the same thing
next year at a younger age.
We had the privilege to
survey 2749 students from independent schools across New
England, New York and New Jersey. 61.9% of the students
were from urban schools and 38.1% were from suburban
schools. Students surveyed were from grades four through
twelve, single-sex and coed schools, religious and
secular.
Survey sample sizes for individual grades
ranged from 331 students to 420 students in grades four
through eight, and between 124 and 237 students in high
school. Below is a link to a pdf of the complete
details, including many graphs. This newsletter contains
some of the highlights.
This summer we will design
survey questions for next year's research. If you would
like to suggest questions or behaviors to study we would
welcome your input. We also plan to survey parents for
the first time next year.
As always, we welcome
your comments. Our telephone number for Children Online
is 413-214-1225.
Best wishes,
Marje Monroe and Doug
FodemanContact Marje or Doug via email at
marjem@childrenonline.org or dougf@childrenonline.org
for information about our programs or consulting
services.
|
Research from 2008 - 2009 Academic
Year
|
|
Though any
expert in the field of Internet safety will tell you that it
is not a healthy practice for children and younger teens to
have Internet access behind the closed doors of their
bedrooms, we consistently find this to be the case.
69.5% of all students surveyed claimed to have Internet access
from behind bedroom doors. These percentages
consistently peaked for high school students between 87.3% and
89.6%. However, even children in grades 4 - 6 claimed to
have access ranging from 42.3% to 63.1% and middle school
students' access ranged from 75.6% to 83.6%.
One might
think that given such high "behind-closed-door Internet
access", most parents must have strong software in place to
help protect their children, provide boundaries online and
keep a watchful eye on their children's activities online. On
average though, 75% of children and teens with Internet access
from their bedroom report not having any parental software
installed to monitor or filter their
activities.
Parents of children in grades four and five
sometimes aren't aware that these younger children already
have email and or instant messaging accounts. 71% of
fourth graders surveyed and 80% of all fifth graders said that
they have at least one email and/or IM account. In fact,
if you survey those fourth and fifth graders who admit to
having email or IM accounts, the average is 1.6 accounts per
fourth grader and 1.8 accounts per fifth grader. That
number rises consistently through high school to 2.8 accounts
per teen. On average, 4.5% of fourth through sixth
graders admit that their parents do not know about their
accounts. That figure rises to about 14% for middle
school students (grades 7-8) and then jumps to about 23% for
high school students. Overall, boys are slightly more
likely to have accounts than girls that parents do not know
about (54% versus 46%). However 36.7% of those students with
more than 1 account are boys, while 63.3% are
girls.
Instant messaging is extremely popular amongst
all students. 21% of fourth graders and 31% of fifth
graders claim to have used IM in the previous four weeks
before the survey was taken. That number jumps to 60% in
sixth grade, 72% in seventh grade and then ranges from 80% to
88% thereafter. However, a similar rise related to age
is not evident when children/teens are asked if they had
visited a chat room or used the chat feature in an online
gaming environment during the previous four weeks. For
example, the smallest percentage was reported by high school
juniors (14.9%) while the highest percentage was reported by
eighth graders (31.1%). We feel that fourth through
sixth graders report greater use of chat services because
there has been a tremendous increase in chatting ability in
online game sites where this age group spends much of their
time.
The question we feel most often under-reported is
whether or not the child has a Facebook, MySpace or other
adult social network. For example, we reported in a
previous newsletter that 17% of one school's seventh grade
class reported having a Facebook or MySpace account on their
surveys. When asked in person, after their teacher had
left the room, 60-70% of the students admitted to having an
account.
2.7% of fourth graders, 4.5% of fifth graders
and 10% of sixth graders admit to having accounts with adult
social networks. The fall of 2008 was the first time a
fourth grader admitted having one of these accounts. The
previous year was the first time a fifth grader admitted the
same. The percentage of those with adult social network
accounts jumps to 26.1% for seventh graders and then 62.7% of
eighth graders. Our "guesstimate" is that about half of
seventh graders and about 80% of all eighth graders have
Facebook or MySpace accounts.
While the popularity of
social networks such as Facebook rises sharply as children get
older, there is one site that has consistently been the most
popular site of all children and teens at every age
group. YouTube. At the low end 11.5% of fourth
graders admit to having a YouTube account, while 31.1% of
eighth graders have accounts at the high end. We
interpret this to mean that about 31% of all eighth grade
students are posting videos on YouTube.
Our children
are growing up online. Children, age 10-18, routinely report
having friends online whom they have never met in
person. 16.7% of all students surveyed report such
"virtual" friends. The lowest number of virtual
friendships is reported by high school seniors (10.6%) while
the highest percentage is reported by eighth graders
(26.3%). Boys are slightly more likely (56.9%) to make
virtual friends than girls (43.1%).
We had 446
responses informing us how or where the students had become
friends via the Internet with someone they previously didn't
know. "Friend of a friend" was the most common reason
given. In second place were friendships made through
online gaming. These could have been via a game on a website
or through game consoles such as Playstation 3 or Xbox
Live. Grouped in third place as a means for making new
friends were the social networks - both Facebook/MySpace and
ClubPenguin/WebKinz. The next most common reasons,
though occurring much less frequently, were meeting friends
through IM, role-playing games such as Runescape, and within
the YouTube community. Some less common explanations included
"we had the same last name", Blog.tv (a social broadcasting
site), via email, "random websites", "people I chat with",
Stardoll.com (a dress-up doll site which is littered with
sexual posts), and "everywhere."
Another question
under-reported is whether students have ever been made to feel
uncomfortable online because of something that happened to
them, something they saw or something that someone did to
them. 23.5% of all students responded affirmatively. The
percentage of students reporting affirmatively to this
question remains fairly consistent across every grade level,
with a low of 20% (sixth grade) to a high of 29% (eighth
grade). Perhaps it will come as little surprise that
affirmative responses came from girls more often than boys
(58.6% compared to 41.4%). Less than half (45.4%) of
children and teens who reported that they had felt
uncomfortable by something online also said that they told an
adult. Girls were twice as likely to tell their parents
as boys (66.3% versus 33.7%). Younger children were
slightly more likely to tell their parents (50.7% to 58.3%)
than high school teens (30.8% to 36.1%).
Regardless of
age, children and teens express common concerns that make them
feel uncomfortable online. First, and foremost, is
contact from strangers. Tied for second place, and not
far behind first place, are offensive pictures or videos and
being tricked or fooled online by others. Following
these top three concerns which make children and teens feel
uncomfortable online are "being made fun of online" and
bullying/harassment. Least of all in the list of their
concerns, but still measureable, are threats and offensive
ads.
Parents are often caught unaware that their
children are posting photos and videos of themselves online,
especially at young ages. We believe that the majority
of postings happen on their social network accounts. 72% of
high school juniors and 81% of high school seniors admit to
posting images and videos of themselves online. 9% to 16% of
fourth through sixth graders admit to posting images or videos
of themselves online. That percentage jumps to 52.5% in
eighth grade and 76.1% by tenth grade. Some of the issues
presented by posting photos or videos develop because they
think their content is private. They don't realize that
these videos and photos are sometimes seen by parents,
counselors, college admission officers, police, and other
kids. For example, I recently spoke to a parent who commented
about a photo he saw through his son's account. The picture
showed a group of teens smoking a bong. Photos like this
can have very serious consequences for teens. No doubt, the
photos and videos students post that contain illegal activity,
or are humiliating or embarrassing to themselves or others are
a small minority.
Up through eighth grade more urban
children report having cell phones than suburban children. (No
rural schools were surveyed in 2008-2009.) In high school,
however, that disparity seems to disappear. It is
interesting to note that there is little or no difference
between urban and suburban students when asking those with
cell phones if they also have texting capability on their cell
phone (91.1% urban vs. 91.0% suburban) (Overall, 81.3% of
urban students had cell phones while only 68.3% of suburban
students owned cell phones.)
Anyone who has been
watching the news over the last few months is likely aware of
"sexting", whereby teens send out nude or partially nude
pictures of themselves or other teens via cell phones.
Cell phone technology, like the Internet, has little or no
boundaries in place or parental supervision. They
present another opportunity for some children and teens to
make poor decisions. In addition, cell phones have
become another method by which scammers target children and
teens. Cramming, unauthorized or fraudulent charges on a
cell phone bill, is such a phenomenon.
Perhaps
the most unexpected results from all of our survey work were
these statistics regarding those students who had cell phones
with texting versus those who had cell phones without
texting:
|
Received Ads |
Received Calls from
Strangers |
Received Offensive
Images |
Received Harassing or
Mean Text |
| Cell
Phones with Texting |
33.9% |
39.2% |
4.0% |
8.0% |
| Cell
Phones without Texting |
7.8% |
5.9% |
1.3% |
1.3% |
36.4%
of all students report that someone had played a joke on them
online. The percentage of those who report having a joke
played on them online jumps from 11-15% in grades 4-6 to
72-81% in grades 10-12. |
|
|
About Children
Online
|
Children Online offers innovative
and comprehensive workshops on Internet safety and online
education to students, parents, faculty and
administrators. Our approach, unique in the field
of Internet safety, combines a thorough understanding of
Internet technologies, child development and counseling, to
focus on the impact of the internet on the social, emotional
and language development of young people.
Doug Fodeman
and Marje Monroe, experts in technology, counseling and
education, work together to provide invaluable research and
tools for parents and schools with practical real-life
solutions to the issues faced by young people online.
Since 1997, Marje and Doug have spoken to thousands of
students, teachers and parents. They have several
publications in the area of Internet safety and offer a free
online newsletter. More detailed information can be
found at ChildrenOnline.org.
© Children Online 2009
For permission to reprint
please contact
DougF@ChildrenOnline.org
| |
|
|
| |
