Abstract
This study examines children’s online safety with a particular interest in children’s online safety skills and conduct as well as parents’ mediation strategies. A survey of 141 children and 163 par-ents was conducted. Children have encountered a variety of different online threats, but not many children have been scared or disturbed by what they have seen or experienced. Our study revealed that children have a significantly more positive opinion about their own safety skills than their par-ents have, and that parents have a significantly more positive view on the amount of online safety mediation they engage in compared to children’s view. Implications of these results for research and for designing tools for children’s online safety mediation are discussed, suggesting the ap-proach of ‘family-negotiated online safety of children’.
Highlights
Children today are growing up in an increasingly digital world (Prensky 2001), and while immersion in online communication, use of smart phones, and social networking are usually seen as typical for teenagers, they are becoming habits of even younger children as well (Livingstone, Smith 2014)
The children who answered our survey had encountered different online threats, for example viruses or malware infecting their phone or computer (22%) and someone having used their password without their knowledge (18%)
Our study revealed that children have a significantly more positive opinion about their own safety skills than their parents, and that parents have a significantly more positive view on the amount of online safety mediation they engage in than their children
Summary
Children today are growing up in an increasingly digital world (Prensky 2001), and while immersion in online communication, use of smart phones, and social networking are usually seen as typical for teenagers, they are becoming habits of even younger children as well (Livingstone, Smith 2014). Boys undertake a larger variety of activities than girls (Livingstone, Smith 2014) They are more interested in games and competitions, and they share their photos and videos both with their friend network and to a wider audience, whereas girls concentrate on personal communication and sharing photos and drawings within their own friend networks (Kotilainen, Suoninen 2013). There has been an increasing interest in children’s online safety in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research, among other disciplines, with studies reporting on children’s risky actions (Pater, Miller et al 2015), parental concerns (Ammari, Kumar et al 2015, Ammari, Schoenebeck 2015), and mitigation of children’s online activities (Renaud, Maguire 2015, Wisniewski, Jia et al 2015, Nouwen, Van Mechelen et al 2015, Hiniker, Suh et al 2016). HCI researchers have argued, for example, for children’s resilience (Wisniewski, Jia et al 2015), translucence in online safety solutions (Yardi, Bruckman 2011), and parental involvement (Nouwen, Van Mechelen et al 2015) and discussed ‘child-centered security’ as a research discipline (Dempsey, Cassidy et al 2016)
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