Cox Communications has released it’s own survey (PDF) on teens and online safety in partnership with National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. It found that generally teens in the US are well connected with their own email address and cell phone and spend a substantial amount of time online via one device or another. 75% or teens have personal information posted on a social networking site. Most teens understand that this is not safe and one quarter know someone who has had “something bad” happen to them because of what was posted online. One third of students have either experienced (first hand or through a friend) or participated in cyberbullying. Those participating in bullies have often been bullied themselves. Cyberbullies think that it is easier to bully (and get away with it) online. A substantial number of those bullied say that it is worse to be bullied online than in person. 20% of teens have engaged in sexting and 10% of the recipients are unknown to the senders. Most teens think that sending sexts of under 18s is wrong, even though the vast majority of teen sexters are under 18 (this is expected isn’t it? most teen ages are under 18) and many teens think that people their age are too young to sext, but half believe that they are old enough to decide for themselves if it is alright or not. Teens understand that sexting is dangerous and most agree that adults over-react to sexting. Finally, while the majority of parents have talked to their kids about desk/laptop based connectivity, barely any supervision/guidance/advice has been given to handheld devices.
This seems to fall inline with many other surveys and studies that have been done on bullying and sexting, though it is interesting that this one came from a telco. The PDF has some very interesting numbers and surprisingly has among the other concluding points, three very important ones.
- While the media love the sexting stories, that isn’t the larger problem – it is cyberbullying. More teens have engaged in one side of bullying online than sexting yet that gets lost in the sex story.
- The normal picture of a menacing boy bullying others does not apply in cyberbullying – girls are more likely to have engaged in cyberbullying than boys have – meaning any campaign targeted towards stopping this needs to look at it from the girls’ eyes. While girls are probably more likely to be cyberbuillies because size doesn’t matter there, there may be other reasons as well.
- Parents may think they are engaged in their children’s online behavior, but the teens do not see it that way – a plurality both say they parents know nothing or very little about what they do online and have not limited their online activity at all. The time is also ripe for someone to talk to and educate parents about what they have to do with regard to Internet safety.
Leave a Reply