Site for parents' sore eyes

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Parents should be aware of their chil­dren’s online activities, a group warns. (JACK DEMPSEY / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

Susan sits in front of the computer when she gets home from school.

A couple of minutes to gulp down dinner and she's back in front of screen until bed.

Beside her is her cellphone, which beeps constantly.

Her fingers move expertly from phone keypad to computer keyboard as she texts, messages and emails her friends, who are sitting with their phones in front of computers in their own homes. They're all also bouncing from website to website, downloading music or movies, and playing games, usually all at the same time.

And mom and dad in Susan's home have no clue what she's really up to; only that she's quiet and sometimes bursts out laughing when she actually uses the cellphone for what Alexander Graham Bell intended.

Susan is fictitious. But she could be any teenage kid, girl or boy. Her parents could be any mom and dad.

And that's the problem, the Winnipeg-based Canadian Centre For Child Protection said Monday.

Centre executive director Lianna McDonald said too many parents don't know what their child is doing when they're online at home, who they're sharing information with, and the potential harm from an Internet predator. The centre launched a new website The Door That's Not Locked (www.thedoorthatsnotlocked.ca) Monday that offers parents the advice and tools they need to keep their children safe from being exploited.

"It's set up in such a way that they can find age-appropriate information and find out what their kids are doing, what the risks are, and how to keep them safer," McDonald said. "What a five-year-old, beginning and using the Internet, needs to know, and what 16-year-old is doing, are quite different things."

The launch of the website, held at an event with Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, coincides with Safer Internet Day 2010 on Feb. 9.

"Through our advisory groups we're learning that up to 40 per cent of Grade 4 students are coming across inappropriate pictures and material," McDonald said. "Really, this underscores the need that parents need to step up."

The website includes tips for parents on how to speak to their kids about the Internet use and advice on parental controls to limit computer use and filter offensive websites.

"Kids have multiple email accounts," McDonald said. "They have passwords that their parents don't have access to. This is a seamless world for children. Whether it's mobile technologies, whether it's sitting down at a computer, we need to look at the ways that we're educating children that transcend those different spaces.

"As children as they grow and mature into adulthood, they have to learn the skill sets and strategies to manage so they can make healthy decisions and protect themselves better."

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

Teen Internet use increasing

73 per cent of wired American teens now use social networking websites (Facebook, MySpace, Nexopia, Bebo, Microsoft Messenger), a significant increase from previous surveys. Just over half of online teens (55 per cent) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65 per cent did so in February 2008.

Teens ages 12-17 do not use Twitter in large numbers, though high-school-aged girls show the greatest enthusiasm for it.

As social networking among teens increases, so does wireless connectivity. Blogging has decreased in popularity among teens and young adults.

Cellphone ownership is nearly ubiquitous among teens and young adults, and much of the growth in teen cellphone ownership has been driven by the youngest teens.

Three-quarters of teens and 93 per cent of adults ages 18-29 now have a cellphone.

In the past five years, cellphone ownership has become mainstream among even the youngest teens. Fully 58 per cent of 12-year-olds now own a cellphone, up from just 18 per cent as recently as 2004.

93 per cent of teens ages 12-17 go online, as do 93 per cent of young adults ages 18-29. Three-quarters (74 per cent) of all adults ages 18 and older go online.

Over the past 10 years, teens and young adults have been consistently the two groups most likely to go online, even as the Internet population has grown and even with documented larger increases in certain age cohorts (e.g. adults 65 and older).

62 per cent of online teens get news about current events and politics online.

48 per cent of wired teens have bought things online such as books, clothing or music, up from 31 per cent who had done so in 2000.

31 per cent of online teens get health, dieting or physical fitness information from the Internet. And 17 per cent of online teens report they use the Internet to gather information about health topics that are hard to discuss with others, such as drug use and sexual health topics.

-- Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 9, 2010 A6