Kids clicking on seedy sites

10th February 2012

A new study has shown that a growing number of Polish children are using the Internet on a regular basis and what’s more logging on to search for adult sites.

The report, carried out by PBI / Gemius and analysed by Atmedia, shows that somewhere in the region of 1.3 million children in Poland go online every day - a figure almost 20 percent higher than the same time last year.

It also found that approximately 80 percent of children searched the net “several times a week” and that in 2011 more than half of users aged between seven and fourteen logged on every day.

According to Rzeczpospolita, Lukasz Wojtasik of the Nobody’s Children Foundation (Fundacji Dzieci Niczyje) estimates that every third child aged between four and six had access to the Internet at least once a week for at least 45 minutes.

“Research right around the world now points to the fact that the age at which children are allowed access to the web is continuing to get lower every year,” he says.

However, new studies conducted by the EU Kids Online II project suggests that not only are youngsters now spending more time on the Internet, but they are doing so with less adult control.

In fact, the number of youngster who are choosing to view adult sites grew by a whopping 40 percent last year alone according to PBI / Gemius and today sits at around one million.

Psychologist Dorota Zawadzka claims in the paper that with such a rapid increase in recent times, the responsibility falls on parents to give guidance to minors when it comes to what is and is not acceptable.

“It’s true that children need the true purpose of the Internet and how it works explaining to them. In addition to this, they also need to be taught how to use it and then controlled,” she says.

Despite this advice, the paper states that as many as a third of parents have never sat down and gone through safety rules with their kids, and 58 percent of children could not recall having ever used the Internet whilst in their parents’ company.

In addition to this, the research concludes that all adults questioned admitted they realised there were indeed dangers online, but that only a third of parents with children aged between three and fourteen had taken active steps to limit the amount of sexual content that could be viewed.

But teaching children right from wrong online may be more difficult than we think, explains Dr Jakub Nowak of the University of Lublin.

“Today’s seven-year-old does not ‘learn’ how to use the Internet. Accessing networks is as natural to them as switching on a light,” he says.