Kids? Tech savvy. Parents? Not.
p2p news / p2pnet: UK children’s charity NCH says there’s “an alarming gap” in technological knowledge between children and their parents.
“Children are so confident in their IT skills that 46% said they could remove parental controls on their internet use and disable security software,” says The Guardian Unlimited, quoting a new NCH study.
“One-third of parents said they understood instant messaging – the equivalent of a written telephone chat – but 79% of children said they used it regularly to communicate online,” says the story, going on, “Moreover, 13% of 11-year-olds surveyed said their parents never supervised internet use and 11% said their parents did not know to whom they chatted online.”
Two-thirds of parents have no idea what a blog is, “even though one-third of children use blogs or networking sites at least two or three times a week,” says the story.
Also See:
The Guardian Unlimited – Parents ignorant of children’s internet use, report reveals, July 17, 2006
p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss
Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
July 18th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
I don’t understand why this “gap” is so “alarming”?
If my parents would have monitored or restricted my Internet access I would have never gained half of the intelligence I have.
The main reason I come across why adults aren’t as computer “educated” as children, is normaly because they’re scared to touch the mouse.
I come across it all of the time, people being scared to even buy an internet connection to their house because (and I quote):
“I don’t wonna’ click the wrong thing and have any of that child porn coming up!”
July 18th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
You should also remember there is a generation gap here. The generation of the parents was one without home computers. They didn’t go up with it. Being as they didn’t it is a bit foreign to them. Most learning computers only for work requirements.
Now tv is one they did grow up with. Not one of them is hesitant about where the power button is or how it works to get the tv on. They are also sure they can control the functions of the set to prevent Playboy Channel or any of the other sex themed channels from coming on at an inappropriate time.
The kids growing up with computers are the same way. They may have more ground rules to learn but they learned them early, just like a language. Those formative years of learning are especially important to acceptance by the generation involved. For the most part, I doubt that most of the population could without instruction saddle a horse. It isn’t that it’s hard or difficult task but that they’ve never had to do it because they’ve never been exposed to it. (Since as a kid, I just about grew up on a horse, yes, I can.)
The point of this is that you learn what is in your environment and what you are exposed to. With the horse you have to learn some of the mean ones will bite or stomp on your foot. With computers you have to learn there are some things you don’t do and some you should do. Knowing which is which is part of that learning.
July 18th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
And they paid big money for this study, right?
It’s dark at night because the sun is on the other side of the world. That will be one million dollars, thank you very much…