Internet Safety Research

SAFT has conducted extensive cross-European surveys to find out more about what children actually do when they go online, and what parents know about their kid´s Internet use. In total more than 10,000 children and parents have been interviewed in this survey, starting ultimo January - primo March 2003. The project continues to monitor children´s Internet use, and the results will be published here on our international site as well as on the different national sites.

The main objective of the survey was to map children and youth´s risk behavior on the internet on both a national and an international level. The target group was children between the age of 9 - 16 years.

Some of the main national findings are:

• Children claim to know more about the Internet than their parents.
• Most children are aware that they should not give out personal information, but they are willing to give out more information than parents would allow.
• 14% of the children have met someone they first met on the net, while only 4% of the parents think the children have done this.
• 44% of the children who use the Internet have visited an adult website by accident or on purpose.
• 30% of the children have seen websites with violent material, while only 15% of the parents think their children have seen this.
• Children and parents agree on the benefits of the Internet as a source of information and entertainment