Children are outpacing their parents in internet use

Do you think you can control what your children do when they are online? According to a recent study cited by Jenna Kagel in an article on fastcolabs.com, children know much more than their parents when it comes to internet use and they certainly know very well how to… bypass… parental controls!

The report by the Independent Competition Regulator in the UK's Communications Industry (Ofcom) on online safety measures confirms every parent's worst fear about their child's online behavior: Children know much more about surfing the internet than their parents.

This means that all those filters and control systems that parents use may be... in vain.

Indeed, researchers found that 18% of children know how to disable protection filters, even though only 6% of them admitted to having done so.

Nearly half of teens ages 12-15 know how to delete their browsing history, while 29% can change settings to hide their activity. As children become more aware of their parents visiting websites they have previously visited, they are becoming more adept at… hiding their tracks.

Of course, parents are well aware of their… online inferiority complex. “Almost half of parents – 44% – of children aged 8 to 11 say they know their child knows more about the internet than they do. This figure rises to 63% for those with children aged 12-15,” reports the BBC.

A 2012 study in Australia came to similar conclusions. According to the survey, 59% of children admitted to having found ways to hide what they were doing online, as reported by News.com.au.

After all, children act like "sponges" and just as is the case with language, the use of which they learn at a very young age, it is no wonder that younger generations are becoming increasingly... more capable when it comes to using computers.

Source: newsbeast.gr