Over 18pct of Romania's minors say parents only think they know their online activity

Over 18 percent of Romania's preteens and teens say their parents only think what they do on line, but in reality they do not know quite everything, while over 13 percent of them say their parents know nothing almost nothing about it, according to the findings of a survey of the children's use of the Internet conducted by the Institute for Crime Prevention and Research released transmitted on Saturday by the Romanian General Police Inspectorate (IGPR).

According to the survey, the children who were left to discover alone how to use the Internet were more often victims of online aggression than those whose parents were with them when they started using the Internet.

"More than 40 percent of all survey participants listed computer use among the main leisure activities, alongside going out with friends, watching TV shows, and doing sports. Over 78 percent of the surveyed have at least one social networking account, and about 47 percent of them have selected their online friends from the people they originally knew. Over 50 percent of them accepted online friendship requests coming form people they did not really know, and 38 percent the study participants said that half of their online friends are strangers," according to the study.

It shows that the availability to socialise with strangers, as well as the lack of knowledge of the tools to protect information with potential for victimisation, are risk factors most of the time associated with not knowing the potential risks in an online environment.

An analysis of the answers to questions about knowing basic online protection options shows that many of the respondents are unaware of their existence or do not know how to use them.

Thus, over 10 percent do not know how to change the security settings of their profile on social media; 22 percent do not know how to compare information from different sites for correctness, and 22 percent do not know how to find information on how to use the Internet safely.

The respondents' answers to questions about understanding the legal implications of online behaviours reveal that a significant number of them do not know the regulations. As a rule, the preteens and teens tend to neglect or minimise the legal and psychological consequences of online violence. Most of them know the basic rules of accessing the Internet safely. However, the percentage of those who do not know or ignore them is not negligible at all, according to the survey.

Also, 85.2 percent of them are aware of the danger of disclosing personal information to strangers, and more than half agree that you need to read the websites' privacy and use policies.

However, a small percentage of the respondents understand the need to protect their personal information from their relatives.

As many as 41.5 percent have no problem telling their best friends the passwords to their online accounts.

As far as potential aggressions are concerned, the survey reveals that many children do not know how to proceed.

If they were threatened online, 5.9 percent of the respondents would not tell anyone; 10.5 percent would respond to threats with threats; 49.4 percent would ask a parent for help, and 57 percent would save the messages as evidence in case where they get to file a criminal complaint.

''The Internet is perceived by most preteens and teens as safe. E-mail and messenger communication networks are the spaces where most of them feel safe. Some of the respondents mentioned that they were victims of online aggressions such as receiving threatening messages, posting pictures of them without prior consent, especially to upset them, breaking into email or social media accounts, or spreading false rumours about them. By correlating online victimisation with indicators measuring parents' involvement in supervising the online activity of their own children, an association relationship is emerging, in that the children who were mostly guided by their parents were the least victimised.''

As many as 40 percent of the respondents have learned to use the Internet with the aid of their parents, while 60 percent say they have discovered alone how to do it.

"The minors who were left to discover how to use the Internet by themselves were more often victims of online aggression than those whose parents were next to them when they started using this network. An analysis of the responses leads to the conclusion that fewer children communicating well with their parents about this subject were victims of virtual aggression, " the survey reveals.

The survey used questionnaires and it was carried out on a sample of 1,370 children from 2nd to 10th grades. It used stratified sampling, with the following criteria: county, urban/rural residence and the educational stage. AGERPRES (RO - author: Cristina Tatu; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu)

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