New research has revealed many parents are have no idea what teenagers are getting up to on the internet

IS your child safe online? You might think you’re keeping a close eye on their smartphone and computer use, but new research has revealed many parents have no idea what teenagers are getting up to on the internet.

A frightening study carried out at the University of Greenwich in England has found youngsters are freely accessing porn and ­gambling sites, conversing with strangers and posting images and videos of themselves without any monitoring from their parents.

The team studied 526 teens in Sweden for eight months, and then questioned them and their parents about their internet habits and the rules imposed by their parents.

Study author Dr Jerjra Van Zalk revealed: “There’s a very low correspondence between adolescent disclosure and parental knowledge. Maybe that’s not surprising.

“The parents say, ‘Oh yes, I know exactly what she’s up to,’ and the youths say, ‘No, I tell them nothing’.

“There is an emerging online social world which a lot of parents feel disconnected from and don’t actually know much about what their kids are up to online.”

The problem is made worse by new websites, social media platforms and apps constantly being developed, making it harder for parents to keep up.

So how can they protect youngsters from danger online?

JIM HARDING, director of the Irish anti-bullying service Bully4u, says parents need to be extra-vigilant.

Internet’s web of evil

WE always ask children “who’s monitoring you online?” and their response is that they’re monitoring themselves. They’re totally unsupervised.

When Bully 4u started visiting schools seven years ago and talking to parents, teachers and students, the advice was to keep the family computer in a room where mum and dad can see what’s going on.

Now, with multiple means of accessing the internet, policing is gone and children are unsupervised the majority of time.

When we started, Facebook was big with kids. Now it’s waning because their parents are on it — so they’ve moved to Instagram and Snapchat.

We know that a significant number of teenagers and young children are visiting chat roulette sites and speaking to strangers via webcam.

We’re particularly concerned about sites like Omegle.

It selects somebody at random from around the world to speak to you through a webcam for 30 minutes, and children as young as ten are accessing it.

Bully 4u is running a campaign to educate about the dangers of chat roulette sites.

There are other sites like Live.ly and Musical.ly which pre-teens use to make videos and lip sync to popular songs.

We’ve heard anecdotally from parents who’ve looked at their kids’ videos that they’re receiving messages from strangers.

We would warn parents against all sites which enable children to communicate with other people, they may not always be who they pretend to be. Children should be encouraged to use privacy settings.

Worryingly, some kids are turning off privacy settings to obtain more followers. We tell them that quality not quantity of followers should be their social media goal.

Parents need to become more involved. They may feel they’ve no influence on their children’s digital playground, but we know from experience that kids do listen to their parents.

Speak to children about the websites and apps they’re using.

 

Establish a line of communication with your child about their digital experiences.

Don’t bury your head in the sand. When we were kids we heard about stranger danger, and there was nothing else.

Now, paedophiles are going online for new opportunities.

If you look at the Yellow app, which is like Tinder for teenagers, anybody can set up a profile, pretend to be another teenager and ask for pictures.

Sexting is a massive problem and it’s going to be a huge issue in schools soon.

It’s important to realise that kids are not at all clued in. They’re not aware of the digital footprint they’re creating and not aware of the dangers of various sites.

They need to be educated about the consequences of their digital behaviour.

You might have a 14-year-old boy who goes online and thinks he’s communicating with a 14-year-old girl.

He’s being sent sexualised images or videos of a 14-year-old girl and he’s encouraged to undress. He’s being recorded by paedophiles and they use that video to snare the next child.

When these videos get out, they’re humiliating. When children are living in the moment they can’t see beyond this.

I would also urge parents to use parental controls offered by their internet provider. The vast majority of parents don’t use them and it means there’s a wave of pornography that’s easily accessible in the house.

The bottom line is that you wouldn’t give children the keys of a car without giving them an intensive course of education, driving lessons and practice. Yet we’re giving six, seven and eight-year-olds access to the internet with no education whatsoever.