Pre-teens creating dangerous world online: report

AN increasing number of pre-teens are creating a dangerous world on the internet where they often contact people they have no connection with and post personal information including their address, phone number and school.

A European report has found that while Irish parents are more vigilant than most in this area a growing number of web-savvy children are able to change safety filters and delete the history of sites they visited.

The EU Kids Online report — the largest survey undertaken in the EU on children and their relationship with social networking sites — also revealed how one-in-10 Irish children, aged nine to 16, say they have seen or received sexual messages online in the past year.

The report went on to reveal that despite the most popular social networking site on the internet, Facebook, setting a minimum age of 13 for membership, more than 20% of nine to 10-year-olds and 50% of 11 to 12-year-olds have their own profile.

EU Kids Online also found that half of all Irish nine to 12-year-olds lie about their age in their profiles — much higher than the EU average — and that the younger the users the less likely they are to have their privacy settings in place.

The report also shows one-in-seven Facebook sites set up by nine to 12-year-olds having no restrictions on access and that 6% of the same age group also post their address or phone number on their home page.

More than 50% of nine to 16-year-olds post the name of their school on their social network pages.

A quarter of nine to 12-year-olds also revealed they had made contact online with people they had never met in daily life and with whom they have no connection other than on the internet.

The report also found that more than half of Facebook members aged nine to 12 did not know how to change their privacy settings.

One third of nine to 12-year-olds also did not know how to block unwanted messages or where to find relevant safety information.

Commenting on these findings, Dr Brian O’Neill, a researcher at the Dublin Institute of Technology, said they demonstrated a relatively new phenomenon in Ireland and that further research was urgently required.

He said the fact that many of those with their profiles set to public had not done so deliberately was particularly worrying.