Common Sense Media Survey - What teens *actually* do online
My weekly portion of undue alarm arrived a few days ago, in the form of the figures from the Common Sense Media, whose survey revealed an almost comic gap between what parents think their teens do online, and what those teens actually do.
- 22% of teens check social networking sites more than 10 times a day, but only 4% of parents realize that
- 51% of teens check social networking sites more than once a day, but only 23% of parents know it
- 28% have shared personal information that they normally wouldn't have shared in public.
- 39% have posted something they regretted
I am the kind of parent who shuttles dizzyingly between 'recklessly laid-back' and 'pathologically over-protective', depending on the headlines in any given week. But before I could dismantle the laptop and reconfigure it using a stair-gate and some childproof bottle-caps, their father reminded me that our eldest is only Nearly-Eight and the other can't yet read, and so we have a little time to perfect our teen social media strategy.
This allowed me useful space to reflect that, while the survey is a timely reminder, the fact that children sometimes give their parents an edited version of the truth should not be news to us. It's a childhood reflex - fostered by relentless parental questioning and nurtured by the realization that the truth can occasionally have adverse outcomes of a pocket-money nature.
Sometimes it's deliberate, but sometimes they just - well, perceive things differently. On Monday, for example, Nearly-Four claimed with heart-breaking conviction that the broken picture frame on the floor had jumped off the wall, magnetically attracted to her person as she walked past it at a moderate pace. Predictably, the impasse was resolved by me apologizing for having questioned her integrity.
My point is this: it is in the nature of children to be flexible in respect of the facts - especially as they begin testing themselves, their identities, and their independence. Some of the time this is relatively harmless, sometimes it isn't - but it always needs to be factored in to our parenting plans. We simply can't assume that we're going to know what our kids are doing online.
What we can do is to encourage them towards web destinations which show us that they value our kids safety as much as we do. We can teach our kids the skills to keep themselves safe, as soon as we can - well before they progress to unmoderated social networks. And - as the survey usefully reminded us - we can help them understand that other people's feelings are as important as their own, and that pretending to be someone else online, as 26% have done, is really not okay.
After that, we have to trust them. And to put things into perspective, Common Sense Media's survey also threw up an unexpected and extremely cheering statistic - 54% have joined an online community or Facebook/MySpace group in support of a cause, and 34% have volunteered for a campaign, non-profit, or charity online. So we must be doing something right.
This allowed me useful space to reflect that, while the survey is a timely reminder, the fact that children sometimes give their parents an edited version of the truth should not be news to us. It's a childhood reflex - fostered by relentless parental questioning and nurtured by the realization that the truth can occasionally have adverse outcomes of a pocket-money nature.
Sometimes it's deliberate, but sometimes they just - well, perceive things differently. On Monday, for example, Nearly-Four claimed with heart-breaking conviction that the broken picture frame on the floor had jumped off the wall, magnetically attracted to her person as she walked past it at a moderate pace. Predictably, the impasse was resolved by me apologizing for having questioned her integrity.
My point is this: it is in the nature of children to be flexible in respect of the facts - especially as they begin testing themselves, their identities, and their independence. Some of the time this is relatively harmless, sometimes it isn't - but it always needs to be factored in to our parenting plans. We simply can't assume that we're going to know what our kids are doing online.
What we can do is to encourage them towards web destinations which show us that they value our kids safety as much as we do. We can teach our kids the skills to keep themselves safe, as soon as we can - well before they progress to unmoderated social networks. And - as the survey usefully reminded us - we can help them understand that other people's feelings are as important as their own, and that pretending to be someone else online, as 26% have done, is really not okay.
After that, we have to trust them. And to put things into perspective, Common Sense Media's survey also threw up an unexpected and extremely cheering statistic - 54% have joined an online community or Facebook/MySpace group in support of a cause, and 34% have volunteered for a campaign, non-profit, or charity online. So we must be doing something right.
Kate Williams, eModeration Research Consultant
Photo credited to danielfoster437 on Flickr
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