Study Analyzes Whether Parents Monitor Children's Online Usage Enough
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- AVG Technologies, an online security company, recently conducted a survey to analyze how early in life children are receiving connected devices and how closely parents are monitoring the usage of these devices.
Connected devices include items with internet access such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and e-readers.
The survey included 893 parents of children ages 3-17. 744 of those parents said that their child owned a connected device and 72 percent of them said that the child received their device before the seventh grade.
About half of the children with one of these devices received it before the fifth grade.
In today's world children are going online at younger ages than ever before. Our technologically driven culture promotes the use of such devices beyond leisure or entertainment. They have become necessities when it comes to education.
With children going online more, the question becomes whether or not parents are taking an initiative to protect and monitor their children's online activities.
According to the survey, 72 percent of parents say they have spoken with their children about the dangers of the internet upon giving them a connected device. 56 percent of parents say they know the password for their child's connected device and 41 percent say they have installed parental blocks on the devices.
51 percent of parents said they check their child's usage on a weekly basis and 19 percent said they check their child's activity at least once a month or not at all.
"This survey shows that while the majority of parents have proactively discussed the dangers of the internet with their children, the numbers suggest that many parents are not engaged in knowing what their children are really doing on their devices," said Tony Anscombe, Senior Security Evangelist at AVG Technologies.
In today's world, parents have to ask themselves how much monitoring of their child's device should they be doing, if any at all.
