|
Jointly conducted by the Internet Foundation, Ankara’s Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ and the Information Technologies and Communications Authority (BTK), the report revealed that all children, aged 9-16, who participated in the study were Facebook users. Titled “Children’s Habits in Using Social Networking Sites,” the report also indicated that 38.4 percent of children use the Internet once-a-day, 30 percent use it more than once per day and 23 percent are online more than once a week.
Children who participated in the study responded to the question of whether or not the time that they spent on social networking sites had a negative impact on them. As such, while 36 percent said they were negatively affected by such sites, 62 percent indicated they were not impacted. Of the children who described the impact as negative, 60 percent said they were unable to spend enough time on their studies, 24 percent said they could not spend enough time with friends, 21 percent mentioned insufficient time spent with family, 17 percent said they encountered information and content not suitable to their age group and 10 percent said they could not participate in social activities as a result of the time they spent on such sites.
Another one the study’s findings was that male children used social networking sites more than their female counterparts. In addition, while 44 percent of children participating in the study described their sharing of their personal information on social networking sites as safe, 40 percent said they found this practice to be unsafe. Another 16 percent indicated that they had no information on the issue of safety.
One of the most salient findings of the study was that children were unaware of the regulations governing the protection of their personal information on social networking sites. A total of 47 percent of research participants indicated that they did not know these regulations and 16 percent said they read but did not understand these regulations. Half of the child participants noted that they accepted friendship requests of only those people who they knew, 33 percent said they only accepted the requests of their friends and their friends’ friend and 15 percent said they accepted all friendship invitations.
The research also showed that boys accepted the friendship requests of strangers more often than girls, and high school students tended to accept requests from all people, irrespective of whether they knew them or not, when compared to middle school students. While 84 percent of children use social networking sites to communicate with their current friends, 32 percent use them out of curiosity, 31 percent use them to find former friends and 28 percent use them to find out what both their friends and others are doing. The research also revealed that these children spend an average of 72.19 minutes online each time they get onto social networking sites and that this figure increased in proportion to their age.
|
