Parents blamed for Children’s Poor Online Behaviour

A recent survey carried out by the popular broadband home phone bundle provider in the United Kingdom, TalkTalk has revealed that 25 per cent of the children subjected to the study sent or received inappropriate content through email and 11 per cent had bullied somebody or was bullied by someone online.

The survey carried out by the broadband provider participated five hundred children of the age group of between six and fifteen. Meanwhile, something more interesting revealed by the research was the 25 per cent of children’s revealing that they though their parents were not aware of their online activities.

According to the survey reports, a whopping 62 per cent revealed that they lied to their parents about their online activities and more than 50 per cent erased their history on the web browser so that their parents could not make out what they had been up to online. Furthermore, while 55 per cent claimed that they had more knowledge on the internet than their parents, 47 per cent admitted to have been routinely spending two hours or more online, unsupervised.

TalkTalk is one broadband provider that offers at least something to enable parental control over the kids’ unsupervised online adventures. This is a free tool called Magic Desktop that enabled the parents to introduce the computer to the child in a friendly environment for it, hence encouraging families to consume the internet safely.

According to the TalkTalk spokeswoman Tristia Clarke, it was known to all that there existed in the internet world threats just as there were threats in the real world. She added that nevertheless it was crucial that the responses of the parents to trhese threats were sensible as well as measured, and their research highlights the need for deeper communication between children and parents.