Memo to wife: Time to talk to 16-year-old. Again.
Just in over the e-mail transome is a new poll done for Symantec, the computer security company, by Harris Interactive. Its major finding: "a significant digital divide between parents and their cyber-savvy children."
No, we don't need to be told this. Nor do our kids. But this poll supposedly tells us what they don't want to, probably because they're too busy playing games, chatting, reading, flirting or whatevering online.
Some of it is so-whattish. So what that the average parent thinks his or her kid is online three hours a week, but kids ages 8 to 17 admit to spending an average of seven hours online a week (which probably means they're actually spending 15 to 20 hours online)?
The part that worries me: Nearly a quarter admit "doing things online that their parents would not condone."
What's going on with kids in cyberspace? Well, one-fifth report encountering "inappropriate material ... that made them feel uncomfortable." Unfortunately, that goes with the territory: The Internet is an incredible window onto our great, big – and often ugly – world. Give a kid a mouse and free rein, and that's one of the first things they'll discover.
But here are some numbers that made me uncomfortable:
* 18 percent of children have had an experience with cyberbullying or cyber-pranks.
* 23 percent have had an encounter with a stranger on the Internet.
* 7 percent reported having met someone in the real world from the Internet.
“I wasn’t aware kids were posting their entire profiles online – including their name, location, photos and contact information,” said one parent, the father of two young boys, who attended a Symantec-sponsored conference on online kid safety last week in New York.
Well, I was. But not my kid – as far as I know from our last chat.
Time to have that talk again.
Symantec has assembled an impressive "Family Resource Web Site," which deals with everything from cyberbullying to Internet addiction. (That last one could help some adults I know.)
