Parents of school-age children have been given a dismal C+ grade from Microsoft when it comes to managing their kids' on-line activities.
In a survey conducted by Mediacs, a Toronto-based media literacy workshop organizer, for MSN Canada says that while students are more tech savvy than ever, fewer than half of them say their parents have laid down rules about instant messaging and chat sites. Further, 31 per cent said their parents trust them but don't know what they are doing on-line, 40 per cent spend one to two hours a day on-line, and 72 per cent use an instant messaging service to communicate with their friends.
"Kids are very aware of the chasm that exists between their technical abilities and those of their parents, meaning that they are basically self-parenting on the Internet," Mediacs managing director Debbie Gordon said in a statement.
"Parents and teachers don't seem to know or talk about the activities that their kids are doing on-line," she added.
Decima Research tabulated the results of a questionnaire filled out by 671 students from grade five to eight in the Greater Toronto Area and Manitoba who attended the Mediacs workshop in the spring.
More than a quarter of the students said their home computers are located in their bedrooms, and just 13 per cent have a computer in a den or family room.
Nearly half of the parents — 42 per cent — do not know who is on their child's IM buddy lists, they said.
While 36 per cent of students claim they know more about computers than their parents, the kids are not quite as savvy as they would like to believe. Forty-two per cent say they have a personal profile or an on-line "space," such as an on-line blog, yet 72 per cent of these students didn't know whether they have set their permission setting to Private or Buddy List Only.
The comment section of the survey did reveal that many parents are becoming more engaged in their children's on-line activities.
"In my house I am not allowed to talk to strangers on-line or give out personal information, and I am supposed to tell my parents who I'm chatting with," one student said. Another student said, "I am not allowed to use bad language or hurt people's feelings."
"It's clear from the survey that kids are using technology in abundance yet are not always thinking about safety first," MSN Canada vice-president Owen Sagness said in a statement.
