Kids surf porn

MANY parents here and worldwide have little idea of what their children are up to online, a worldwide survey has found.  They do not know whether their children have been a target of cyber-bullying, Internet paedophiles and online fraudsters or been exposed to pornography – or how their children are coping with all this if they have.

Ask parents and 92 per cent of them will say they have set up ground rules about using the Internet, but ask the young ones and only 66 per cent say these rules exist, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has found.

The ITU, the technology arm of the United Nations, revealed this and other findings in conjunction with World Telecommunications and Information Society Day on May 17.

The day was marked here on Tuesday by about 80 industry professionals at a gathering organised by the Association of Telecommunications Industry of Singapore (Atis).

Other findings by the ITU include:

teens-and-internet

  • About one in three teenage girls who go online have been harassed in chatrooms, but only 7 per cent of them tell their parents because they do not want to lose their Internet access;
  • One in five children are targeted by a sexual predator or paedophile each year;
  • Three quarters of children are willing to share information about themselves and their families online in exchange for goods and services, such as contest prizes or downloads, opening themselves to cybercriminals who use the information to steal money or their identities.The numbers from the survey are not specific to Singapore, which has one of the highest Internet and mobile penetration rates in the world, but these issues are likely to be encountered here as well, some industry players said.

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