You know that the Internet has risks and there are users who do not have the best of intentions, but do you really know how dangerous the Internet can be for children?
The numbers and facts on this page may scare you, but that’s all the more reason to be an involved and active part of your child’s Internet use and their online safety education. After all, your child’s best protection is you!
Here are the top 5 risks to Canadian children on the Internet:
- Sexual offenders targeting online games that have chat rooms including interactive web games, computer and console games.
- Sexual offenders hijacking instant messaging accounts and coercing youth to send nude or partially clothed images of themselves. (Between 2005 and 2006, reports of this threat doubled)
- Sexual offenders using 3D animated characters, referred to as Avatars, to engage youth in online conversations.
- Sexual offenders targeting social networking sites where youth are encouraged to create online diaries and connect with new people.
- Youth sending nude images to peers without understanding that the images could be forwarded or permanently posted online.
Source: cybertip.ca
This list is based on the 23,000+ reports Cybertip.ca has fielded from the public since 2005. While 4 out of 5 threats involve the increasingly sophisticated techniques sexual offenders use to lure, groom and abuse children/adolescents, reports also indicate that children/adolescents are willingly engaging in risky Internet behaviour.
Sobering Statistics
- More than 5 in 10 youth say they have pretended to be a different age on the Internet
- 5 in 10 say they pretend to look different than they do or that they have a different personality
- 2 in 5 youth say a stranger on the Internet asked for personal information such as a photo, phone number, street address or school.
- 1 in 4 youth say someone they met online asked to meet them in person.
- 1 in 7 youth say they have met in person with someone they knew only online.
- 1 in 8 of the youth who met in person with Internet strangers described the meeting as a “bad experience.”
- Cyber predators can be any age, sex, race or ethnic background. They are mostly male.
- Two thirds of sexual advances happen in chat rooms; one quarter happen over instant messaging.
Source: getwebwise.ca
Is your child a potential victim of an online predator?
- 7 out of 10 victims are girls; 3 out of 10 are boys
- 8 out of 10 victims are over 14; 2 out of 10 are between 10 - 13 (Younger children are often greatly distressed by their predator encounters)
- 4 out of 10 victims have unsupervised access to the Internet
- 8 out of 10 victims spend time in chat rooms or IM.
Cyber predators can be any age, any sex, any race or ethnic background. They are mostly male.
Source: getwebwise.ca
Young Canadians in a Wired World 2005 Study
In 2005, Media Awareness Network conducted a nationwide survey of more than 5,200 students in Grades 4 to 11 about their online activities, attitudes, and opinions. This study, which was phase II of a study begun in 2001, was the most comprehensive and wide-ranging of its kind in Canada.
Here is a summary of the survey’s key findings:
- Young people are aware of privacy issues, but often give out personal information online.
- 90 percent of students’ top 50 web sites have registration procedures in which visitors are asked to submit personal information.
- Almost one third of young people say they would give their real name and address to sign up for a free email account (30 percent) or to create an online profile on a site like MSN (27 percent). 19 percent would give this information to enter an online contest.
- Kids are more likely to divulge personal information on a commercial site than in an interactive area such as a chat room. Only 7 percent of students would reveal their name and address in a chat room or in a profile on a dating site. However, one third (34 percent) of kids would give their email address in a chat room.
- The Internet offers young people a place where they feel anonymous. In this environment, a majority (59 percent) say they have assumed a different identify. Of those students, 17 percent say they pretended to be someone else so “I can act mean to people and not get into trouble.”
- 34 percent of students in Grades 7 to 11 report being bullied, while 12 percent report having being sexually harassed.
- Among those who report being bullied, 74 percent were bullied at school and 27 percent over the Internet.
- For those who report sexual harassment, the situation is reversed. 47 percent say they were harassed at school, while 70 percent were harassed over the Internet.
- Of those young people who report being sexually harassed over the Internet, over half (52 percent) say it was someone they knew in the real world.
- 86 percent of students report that they have email accounts, compared with 71 percent in 2001. 72 percent of these are free web-based accounts such as Hotmail.
- Playing games online is the favorite weekday activity for younger students. 89 percent of Grade 4 students report playing games online. Games decrease in popularity by grade while instant messaging increases.
- 28 percent of Grade 4 students use instant messaging on an average school day, a number that jumps to 43 per cent in Grade 5; by Grade 11 that number is 86 percent.
- Chat rooms rank last out of preferred ways to socialize online. When asked what they would do online if given some free time on the Net, only 6 percent of girls choose visiting chat rooms, compared with 62 percent who choose talking to friends on instant messaging.
- On an average weekday, 14 percent of students in Grade 4 engage in writing an online diary or Weblog.
- Students who have their own computer with Internet access report spending twice as much time online as those who share an Internet-connected computer with their family.
Source: www.media-awareness.ca
Take a more complete look at the 2005 survey’s findings.
