Are Indian kids safe Online – Analysing a Survey Report

Computer security firm McAfee recently commissioned a comprehensive study titled ‘Are Indian kids safe online?’ The survey was conducted across 10 Indian cities & included kids of all age groups. The study is basically all about the online behaviour of Indian children and related parental concerns.

Some of the salient findings of the study are as follows:

• 53% kids have shared personal information online
• 64% of 9-12 yr olds are members of social networking sites
• About 98% kids across cities access internet from homes
• About 21% said they were exposed to adult content, with the proportion being 40% in Mumbai and 28% in Bangalore.
• While 54% parents have generic security software on their PCs, a massive 77% are unaware of the specific software’s available to monitor child safety online.
• About 12% of the kids have reportedly faced online bullying.

This study clearly points out the following:

• Children are spending more time socializing on the net with friends than in real life, especially in the 9-12 year category.
• Many kids and parents are not fully aware of the threats present online.
• There seems to be a clear gap between how kids spend their time online and how parents perceive kids spend their time online.

In conclusion:

There’s a definite Internet usage patterns of Indian kids that has been emerging.

There seems to be a complete lack of adequate monitoring of online activities by parents.

We can safely conclude that as the number of teenagers and pre-teens rises, their parents’ awareness of their activities seems to be on a steady decline, what with the emergence of newer technologies and ever new techniques used by the bad guys out there.

There is an ever increasing need for installing a good family protection software to monitor kids online. A typical monitoring software should be able to report the internet activites(preferably in real-time -SMS’ing capabilities) among other features.

One of the lesser known and rarely reported trend is online bullying. This issue is a major concern and widely reported in western countries. Like all fads it would only be a matter of time that problems like bullying and sexting becomes a fad in India too.

Some medical experts have highlighted the fact that kids suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD) are prone to become cyber addicts.

Looking at the totality of the report, I would stress the following:

Parents should learn/understand what are the probable threats that their kids can face online. How best to protect them? How best to handle sensitive issues like adult content? Understand what exactly Privacy means and last but not the least the most important thing to remember is that parents need to keep communication channels with their children open and try to learn from them as well.