Irish parents worry over web content

18-10-2004

by Deirdre McArdle

Almost half of Irish parents consider the internet to be the main source of unsuitable material for their children.

That's according to research conducted by the Internet Advisory Board (IAB) which highlights parents' continuing concerns about the internet as a medium. Some 50 percent of parents surveyed said that they were concerned about their children accessing pornography via the internet while 28 percent said they worried about their children using digital television to access inappropriate content.

Parents have become more savvy where the internet and their children are concerned with the report showing that 90 percent of parents have drawn up rules for their children's access to the internet and eight out of ten children surveyed said that there is usually someone with them when they go online.

Despite this increased supervision the report found that some parents remained unaware of the additional threats of alternative internet access methods such as the mobile phone and some games consoles.

As the internet continues to change and expand, parents need to become more "web wise." A gap in knowledge between what children are actually doing on the internet and what their parents think they are doing was highlighted in a survey conducted by the London School of Economics in July. The research found that 57 percent of children aged nine to 19 have come into contact with pornography online. Yet, only 16 percent of parents were aware that their children had seen adult content on the web.

Meanwhile, other statistics show that parents are right to be concerned about their children accessing the internet. An EU-back non-profit called SAFT (Safety, Awareness, Facts and Tools) found in 2003 that 46 percent of children in Northern Europe who chat on the internet say someone has used it to ask to meet them.