Media

Rain (AM and PM) 3° London Hi 10°C / Lo 3°C
Popular Topics

Teenagers online for 31 hours a week

By Richard Garner

Monday, 9 February 2009

Teenagers are spending a staggering 31 hours a week online, a survey shows. One in three admits trying to hide what they are looking at if a parent comes into the room.

Research involving 1,000 children shows they spend one hour and 40 minutes a week on average looking at porn sites. Information about cosmetic surgery is also an interest, with youngsters spending just over an hour looking at items such as how to enlarge breasts and collagen implants.

But the good news is that they are also spending at least three hours a week trying to seek help with homework, although examiners believe many may just copy what they find without understanding the subject, shows the survey by www.cybersentinel.co.uk, which provides software solutions allowing parents to block access to certain sites.

Post a Comment

View all comments that have been posted about this article.

Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.

Comments

( Leave a comment )
parents definitely need to be Internet-wise today
[info]tina3745 wrote:
Wednesday, 15 April 2009 at 10:37 pm (UTC)
To my mind, parents definitely need to be Internet-wise today. We teach our children about Internet safety, spend time with them while they are online. We also put our computer in a public area of our home, so I can see what they are doing and who they are talking to. Additionally, we use both a monitoring program Ez Parental Control (used mostly by families who want accountability for their internet viewing) and a filtering program – Ez Internet Timer (used mostly by families who want to put a time limit/block on Internet usage) from IT Works Corporation. They are very simple with options that allow a parent to select how much control they want over their child's computer (http://www.internettimer.net) And, to my mind, the best way for a parent to keep tabs on a teen's use of MySpace is for the parent to get their own MySpace account and become their teen's MySpace friend. I created one and I can view everything that is publicly available on my kid's MySpace site now. No doubt that we have to keep an eye on what my kids is doing and looking. So far really all that has happened is that a couple of the boys used a curse word on her comments page. We teach our kid to connect only with friends he has already met in person
| Reply | Thread

Most popular