Interesting report on how primary schools can keep up with e-Safety including:

The Acceptable Use Policies in the case studies schools included rules and advice for children around:
• turning off the screen and informing an adult if they find anything unpleasant or disturbing online;
• touching files that are not their own;
• being respectful to other people online;
• sending abusive or inappropriate text messages;
• giving out personal details that might identify them or their location;
• placing photos of themselves online;
• denying access to unknown individuals;
• blocking unwanted communications; and
• privacy settings, security and passwords.

A Survey Of Awareness, Attitudes, And Use Of Online Parental Controls

Findings From A National Survey Among Parents

FOSI believes that a grounding in facts is necessary for proper initiatives, legislation and development of best practices. For our new research initiatives, the Institute will be partnering with renowned research groups to obtain information on the latest trends and behaviors of children online. By doing this, we hope to achieve a basis of evidence on which further projects will be based.

The Institute has high hopes for a future in research that will cover a wide variety of topics, and is thrilled to have worked with Hart Research Associates on our first piece of data, Who Needs Parental Controls? The project would not have been possible without the support of its sponsors, AT&T, Google, Microsoft and Verizon.

Please see below for the Executive Summary and full report, and stay tuned for upcoming features.

 

	Who Needs Parental Controls, Final Report (PDF)
	Who Needs Parental Controls, Executive Summary (PDF)
	Using Parental Controls? You're not alone. (Infographic PDF)
	Who Needs Parental Controls, Slide Deck (PowerPoint PPT)

Best practise for parental controls coming soon, in the mean time...

Kids Today…

• Are the Heaviest Mobile Video Viewers: On average, mobile subscribers ages 12-17 watched 7 hours 13 minutes of mobile video a month in Q4 2010, compared to 4 hours 20 minutes for the general population.
• Are More Receptive to Mobile Advertising than their Elders: More than half (58%) surveyed in September 2010 said they “always” or “sometimes” look at mobile ads.
• Out-Text All Other Age Groups: In Q1 2011, teens 13-17 sent an average of 3,364 mobile texts per month, more than doubling the rate of the next most active texting demo, 18-24 year olds (1,640 texts per month).
• Talk Less on the Phone: Besides seniors 65-plus, teens talk the least on their phones, talking an average of 515 minutes per month in Q1 2011 versus more than 750 minutes among 18-24 year olds.
• Grew Up in the Age of Social Media—and It Shows: While they make up just 7.4 percent of those using social networks, 78.7 percent of 12-17 year olds visited social networks or blogs.
• Watch Less TV than the General Population: The average American watched 34 hours 39 minutes of TV per week in Q4 2010, a year-over-year increase of two minutes. Teens age 12-17 watch the least amount of TV on average (23 hours 41 minutes per week).
• Spend Less Time on their Computers: American 18 year olds averaged 39 hours, 50 minutes online from their home computers, of which 5 hours, 26 minutes was spent streaming online video.

I have just conducted a survey of the technology that is owned by our students across the college, as well as how they use tech on a day-to-day basis. The survey was run using  Google Form that was then embedded into FROG, our E-Learning solution. We have just over 1000 students on role across Y7-11 (11-16 yr olds), so to get nearly half the students to complete this off their own back was great – a good representative sample! The results are really interesting:

Follow the link to get some great technology stats from a school in Basingstoke

Peter Bradley, Kidscape’s Deputy Director and a psychotherapist specialising in adolescents said, “We were alarmed by the number of risks being taken by teenagers whilst online. We know that safe online behaviour is taught in schools and by other organisations like us, but teenagers seem to be unable to relate the risks to themselves. There appears to be a group of children vulnerable to harm on the internet who in real life don’t register as being at risk. This new research should challenge teenagers, parents and professionals to do the best we can to make internet safety guidelines meaningful to everyone.

Nice bit of statistical scare mongering for Safer Internet Day.

Seems to me that online is a great place to experiment, as long as everyone understands the boundaries.

The demographics of social networking sites are changing.

New EU Kids Online Survey - Interesting findings:

Children are going online at ever younger ages - the average age of first internet use is seven in Denmark and Sweden and eight in several Northern European countries. Across all countries, one third of 9-10 year olds who use the internet go online daily, this rising to 80% of 15-16 year olds.

Being bullied online by receiving nasty or hurtful messages is relatively uncommon, experienced by one in twenty children, but it is the risk most likely to upset children.

Risks increase with age: 14% 9-10 year olds have encountered one or more of the risks asked about, rising to 33% 11-12 year olds, 49% 13-14 year olds and 63% 15-16 year olds.

52% of parents whose child has received sexual messages say that their child has not; 61% of parents whose child has met offline with an online contact say that their child has not.

Two thirds of children (68%) think their parents know a lot or quite a bit about their children’s internet use.

Full report: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/Home.aspx

Not sure this will completely address parent's concern about text speak!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8468351.stm

Great post from Mary Kay Hoal on why survey results should be taken with a pinch of salt. It is a good idea to look at these types of survey to see how you feel about the responses.