Concern for child safety in online exposure
It found that despite all the risk warnings, one in six secondary school students physically met a stranger with whom they had online contact, often discovering those contacts had lied about their age or identity.
Many children essentially advertised their vulnerability because they did not know how or did not bother to use privacy settings to restrict access to their personal information on social networking sites.
Many parents had no control over what their children were doing online because they accessed the internet on laptops or computers in their own rooms or on mobile phones away from home.
Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald said the threats and challenges thrown up by new technologies had to be acknowledged and she had asked her department to examine the appropriate responses as part of the next national children’s strategy.
But the ISPCC, which commissioned the study, pleaded for urgent action by the Government and internet service providers to tackle some of the more obvious gaps in protection.
It called for the development of a “panic button” to feature on every page of social networking sites and other sites aimed at children and teens so that they could instantly report unwelcome contacts or inappropriate material and receive help to withdraw safely from a risky situation.
Caroline O’Sullivan, the ISPCC director of services, said the idea was not new but Ireland was slow to adopt it as it would require co-ordination between child protection agencies, technical support services and the gardaí.
“It’s in use on Facebook in the UK because there was pressure from child protection agencies there but it hasn’t transferred here.
“The vast majority of the children surveyed here supported the idea so we should listen to them,” said Ms O’Sullivan.
The ISPCC is also calling for stronger legislation to force internet service providers to block illegal or inappropriate material when it is reported to them.
Another key demand is harsher sentencing for sex offenders.
Among the other findings of the study, which recorded the experiences of more than 18,000 people aged between 10 and 18, is that the majority spend between one and three hours on the internet daily, much of their access is unsupervised and they have easy access to over-18s content.
