Jessica Birthisel | Nov. 10, 2010
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| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Professor Emerita Chris Ogan reviewed some of the preliminary findings of a survey of European Union children's online behavior during a Research Colloquium Monday. The survey included feedback from about 50,000 participants. |
After conducting approximately 50,000 face-to-face interviews with parents and children in 25 countries, international project partners like Ogan are beginning the first steps of sifting through and interpreting the data.
“This is a data set the likes of which I’ve never seen in my life,” Ogan told colleagues and students at Monday afternoon’s Research Colloquium in the Ernie Pyle Hall lounge.
The only non-European in the network, she is working with the project’s Turkey team and was invited to join the project based on her own research and teaching experience in the region as well as her network of colleagues in Turkey.
The survey, coordinated by professors Sonia Livingstone and Leslie Haddon at the London School of Economics, seeks to identify the opportunities and risks inherent in children’s online activities. Ogan said researchers are interested in parents’ roles in children’s Internet use. The survey measured parents’ concerns about and knowledge of their children’s online activities and the degree and type of parents’ monitoring and support, among other topics.
Though the data is preliminary, representing 23,000 of the interviews, and represents mean averages, Ogan said context appears to be a major factor in online practices.
“There are a lot of cultural issues involved with this,” said Ogan, issues that affected both researchers’ methodology and subjects’ self-reporting of behaviors.
For example, nearly 50 percent of the children reported accessing the Internet in their bedrooms.
“We are concerned about that,” said Ogan, “because there’s no way of a parent knowing what that child is doing online.”
While that information may be similar to the U.S., other data point to those cultural differences. Only about 10 percent of children in the survey used handheld devices to access the Internet and only about 60 percent access the Internet every day. Ogan said both of these percentages would be higher in the United States.
Early research suggests a correlation between a country’s affluence and the amount of access children have to online technologies.
“The story to be told through all of this is that poorer countries had less risk but they also had less access,” said Ogan.
In assessing some of the risk factors for children online, Ogan described findings on Internet literacy and safety. Many children overestimated their own ability to function in online spaces.
“Kids have a lot of bravado about this,” said Ogan.
About 60 percent of children in the survey know how to block messages, 54 percent know how to set privacy settings in a social networking site and 54 percent can compare information on different sites in order to determine accuracy. the survey found nearly 40 percent believe they know more about the Internet than their parents do.
In terms of opportunities online, the study found that seven out of 17 activities in a month were considered “positive,” with schoolwork-related tasks topping the list. The vast majority of children were participating in social networks, with Facebook the clear favorite. Despite Facebook’s age minimum of 13, a quarter of 9- to 10-year-olds and half of 11- to 12-year-olds admitted to using the site.
Regarding exposure to sexual images, only 23 percent of children admitted to seeing such images online or offline, a number Ogan though to be low and not congruent with United States children’s self-reporting of online behaviors.
In terms of cyberbullying, Ogan said only 20 percent of children reported acting in this way on or offline. This was another area in which she anticipates that cultural factors may be influencing the results.
One area of contention among those working on the EU Kids Online project was the survey category of meeting someone on line, then going to meet them face-to-face. Ogan said they had long conversations about whether this represented a risk or an opportunity for children. In either case, she said, on average only 8 percent of children had ever done this, so it didn’t represent a common trend.
Ogan explained that parents mostly underestimate the risks of their children’s behavior online. Approximately 40 percent of parents whose children haves seen sexual images online say their child has not seen them. Fifty-six percent of parents whose children have been bullied online are not aware of it. And more than 60 percent of parents whose children report meeting offline with an online contact believe their children have not done this.
Ogan concluded that the more access students had to the Internet, the more opportunities and the more risks they were exposed to. Some countries seek to alleviate the risks of children’s online media use through censorship, but she said that wouldn’t be her recommendation.
“Our answer to that is education, not the banning of websites,” said Ogan.
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| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Ogan said the study found several similarities with U.S. children's behavior. Differences include fewer EU children using handhelds to access the Internet, for example, and less frequent Internet use. |
Initial findings of the report are available at www.eukidsonline.net and data sets will eventually be made public for other researchers to use.
Doctoral student Rosemary Pennington said she attended the talk because her own research centers on how young adults, particularly those in Europe, use new media.
“This will be very important data for when I do my research down the line,” said Pennington.
The next research colloquium is scheduled for Nov. 17 when doctoral student Jeff Cannon presents his research.
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