Parental control of children using the internet and social networks

Abstract

The paper starts from the standpoint that the expansion of the Internet imposes a need for instructing the parents to adequately guide children to use safely this virtual space. That is why we present the results of an empirical research, aimed at establishing how parents control the behaviour of their children on the Internet and social networks. The research was conducted on a sample of 105 parents of the sixth grade elementary school pupils, and the applied questionnaire was construed for this occasion. The obtained results show that the majority of parents think that they know about their children's activities on the Internet, and that a significant number of parents recognize potentional dangers of using the Internet and social networks. When it comes to mediation, i.e. the ways of guiding/regulating the child's behaviour on the Internet, it turned out that the parents most commonly use mediation based on facts or restrictive mediation, while value-based, i.e. active mediation is used by a considerably smaller number of parents. Especially important finding is that the majority of parents show interest for organized instruction on protection of children on the Internet. This interest of parents should be a starting point for creating a systemic support of the society, and especially the support of educational institutions for strengthening parental competencies for providing a safe Internet space for their children.