The authors must have fun writing the report, which confides that
Parenting in the digital age, against a backdrop of continuing technical evolution, can be complex and challenging as children rapidly take up the opportunities of internet use.Guides for the perplexed were saying much the same thing about uptake of products from Mr Gutenberg and his peers and then about the magic box known as television.
The report goes on more usefully to state that
According to our research use of tablets has tripled this year, becoming the device of choice for 8-11s to access audio visual content and games in particular. Over six in ten 12-15s now own a smartphone and it is the most popular device for social networking among that age group.
Children’s confident adoption of new technologies has many positive outcomes with benefits of use ranging from education, communication, social engagement and entertainment. But there are also perceived risks, particularly around internet content, and the conduct and contact risks inherent in peer to peer communication facilitated by the internet. Although the vast majority of children say that they are confident they can stay safe online the research also shows their levels of confidence have fallen slightly from previous years. The research notes some trends around unsafe behaviours, such as maintaining an open social network profile, and indicating that children are less likely to know how to block online messages from people they don’t want to hear from. (One third of 12-15s with a social networking profile in 2013 have it set so that it can be potentially viewed by people unknown to them. This is up from 22% last year.)
The vast majority of parents say they trust their children to use the internet safely. This agreement increases with each age-group, consisting of 52% of parents of 3-4s, 72% of parents of 5-7s, 83% of parents of 8-11s and 89% of parents of 12-15s. However, parents also report having concerns about their child’s online activities. Parental concerns tend to be higher around issues identified in this report as relating to contact and conduct with around one quarter of parents concerned around cyberbullying and a similar number concerned about downloading bogus applications and viruses.
One in five parents are concerned about who their child is in contact with and the risk of the child giving out personal information to inappropriate people. Around one sixth of parents are concerned about the issues identified in this report as content issues which their child might encounter online.
That said, the vast majority of parents feel that the benefits of the internet outweigh the risks and around half feel they know enough to help their children stay safe online. Overall, half of parents of 5-15s agree that their child knows more about the internet than they do but this also varies by the age of the child – from 14% of parents of 3-4s up to 63% of parents of 12-15s.The document features the following 'main conclusions' -
Parental strategies are a combination of mediation and controls
The quantitative findings from the 2013 Children and Parents: Media use and attitudes report study showed that the vast majority of parents are actively engaged in mediating their child’s online activity in some way. Most use a combination of approaches including:
- Regularly talking to their children about staying safe online. Almost eight in ten parents say they have talked to their child about online safety with 45% doing so at least monthly.
- Having rules relating to parental supervision. Over half of parents have set rules around supervision of the internet which include regularly checking what children are doing online or only using when supervised.
- Mediation through technical tools. Over six in ten parents use some kind of technical mediation such as parental controls, safe search settings, You Tube safety Mode, time-limiting software or PIN/Passwords set on broadcaster’s websites.
Overall, 85% of parents with a child that goes online at home via a PC/laptop or netbook use at least one of these approaches with 20% using all three, 35% using two and 30% using only one. Fifteen per cent of parents use none of these mediation techniques.
A 2012 qualitative study into parents’ views on parental controls suggested that the approach parents took to mediating the potential risks to their children in the online sphere was generally consistent with their overall parenting style. Respondents typically spoke of their aim to balance rules and boundaries with trust and freedom. Instilling the right values and habits in their children was seen to be critical.
Parents’ use of a range of technical tools and other safety measures on sites regularly used by children
However … technical tools also play a part in many parents’ online parenting strategies with six in ten parents of children who use a PC/laptop/netbook to go online at home using some form of technical mediation. These include:
- 43% of parents of online 5-15s and 40% of parents of 3-4s report having parental controls as defined above6 in place on a PC, laptop or netbook. A majority of parents with parental controls set on their device agree strongly that these controls are effective and that their child is safer as a result.
- Safe search setting: Four in ten parents of online 5-15s say they use safe search settings on search engine websites.
- Time-limiting software: One in ten have software installed to limit the amount of time a child can spend online.
- YouTube Safety Mode: Two in ten parents have the Safety Mode set. This increases to three in ten parents of children who actually visit the YouTube website through a PC/laptop or netbook.
- Content provider guidance: One in three online children now watch television content via UK television broadcasters’ websites. Around one in four of the parents who are aware of the guidance labels have set up a PIN or password to be used before viewing programmes that have a guidance label (24% of the 67% aware of guidance labels).
Social media monitoring also plays a role, with parental awareness of the minimum age requirement for Facebook having increased among parents whose child has a profile on this site and 73% of parents check their child’s social networking site activity. In addition, figures from the 2012 study shows that where the parent and the child have a profile on the same website, 97% are ‘friends’.
Non take-up
Over half of parents do not use parental controls in the form defined by this report, i.e. those provided by their ISP , their computer’s operating system or programmes installed or downloaded by someone in their household.
The main reasons for non take-up of parental controls, as identified in the 2013 quantitative survey, are a combination of trusting and supervising the child – depending on the age of the child.
The 2012 qualitative study also showed that a lack of awareness and understanding of parental controls appeared to be a key reason for non-take up. The study suggests that there is a perception, particularly amongst parents with lower levels of confidence about technology, that the process of selecting and installing parental controls was complex and time-consuming.
The qualitative findings also suggested the potential value of parental controls did not appear to be front-of-mind on a daily basis for parents. In the absence of a specific trigger many parents without parental controls admitted ‘not getting around’ to considering them. Their reported focus was more on the issues and problems that they were regularly experiencing with their children’s day-to-day internet use (e.g. children spending too much time online) rather than around the risks which few parents had any direct experience of (e.g. of physical and psychological harm related to exposure).
In addition, even amongst those who had installed parental controls, many had not given them much further thought and protections may have become outdated as a result of this lack of continuing engagement.
Overall, parental controls were viewed as a supplement to, rather than replacement for, hands-on parenting. Supervision and other forms of parental mediation were felt still to be needed to manage all of the day-to-day issues their children faced, including risks emanating from children’s internet usage.The report has the following structure
Part 1 The Context of the Internet
Section 2 – Opportunities, risks and challenges
Takes an overview of children’s access to the open internet as an educational resource, as a platform for communication and creativity, but also as a source of distinct risks around content, contact and conduct, with specific regulatory challenges.
Section 3 - Parental mediation: managing the risks to children
Describes the tactics of parents, carers and educators in guiding and informing children’s behaviour through education and advice, mediation and rules as critical aspects of child protection online.
Section 4 - Safety mechanisms and the role of industry
Describes in detail many of the tools and mechanisms offered to parents to protect their children online and notes some of the issues around such tools. It does so within a simplified model of the internet from content origination to content reception by the user and gives an overview of the status of internet intermediaries like ISPs.
Part 2 The Research
Section 5 – Children and the internet: use and concerns
Sets the context for mediation by looking at key changes in children’s use of the internet, their likes and dislikes compared to the online concerns of parents.
Section 6 - Parental mediation strategies: take -up, awareness of and confidence of parents in relation to parental controls
Provides both quantitative figures and qualitative insights to create an in-depth picture of the broad range of online mediation strategies employed by parents and their levels of confidence about their ability to keep their children safe online.
Section 7 - Safety measures on sites regularly visited by children
Looks at the research available regarding parental mediation of websites regularly visited by children, including search engines, YouTube and social networking sites.
Section 8 - Why parents choose not to apply parental control tools
Looks at the various reasons why some parents choose not to install parental controls.
