In their own words: What bothers children online?
Nearly 10,000 children told us about what upsets them and their friends online. Their responses were diverse, revealing a long list of concerns.
Pornography (named by 22% of children who told us of risks) and violent content (18%) top children’s online concerns. Overall, boys appear more bothered by violence than girls, while girls are more concerned with contact-related risks.
Violence receives less public attention than sexual material, but many children are concerned about violent, aggressive or gory online content. They reveal shock and disgust on seeing cruelty, killings, abuse of animals and even the news – since much is real rather than fictional violence, this adds to the depth of children’s reactions.
As children told us, video-sharing websites are often associated with violent and pornographic content, along with a range of other contentrelated risks. Among the children who linked risks to specific internet platforms, 32% mentioned video-sharing sites such as YouTube, by websites (29%), social networking sites (13%) and games (10%).
Children’s mention of risks rises markedly from nine to 12 years old. Younger children are more concerned about content and other risks. As they get older they become more concerned about conduct and contact risks. These are linked in many children’s minds to the use of social networking sites such as Facebook. Concern about risks is higher among children from ‘high use, high risk’ countries. Policy implications are identified and discussed.
Published : 6th February 2013
Author : Sonia Livingstone, Lucyna Kirwil, Cristina Ponte and Elisabeth Staksrud [ More From This Author ]
Publisher : EU Kids Online [ More From This Publisher ]
Rights : EU Kids Online
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