Swimming with a water noodle or riding a bike with training wheels: When the youngest are learning new things, parents prefer to play it safe. But when it comes to the Internet, they obviously have complete trust in their offspring. In the current ESET study, both those under four years old and those between four and seven years old performed better than teachers and educators when it came to internet and media literacy. This may also be a reason why almost half of those surveyed forego child protection programs: even one in two children under the age of four goes online without protection. It is also interesting that most pocket money goes towards sweets instead of digital entertainment. These are, among other things, the results of the second part of a current representative YouGov study commissioned by the IT security manufacturer ESET, for which more than 1,000 parents with children up to 18 years of age were surveyed.
Half of the protégés surf without child-friendly filters
Trust is good, control is better: unlike when learning to ride a bike or swim, parents stay away from (technical) aids when it comes to internet security. Almost half of those surveyed do not have a child protection program, most often mothers and fathers in Hamburg, Saxony-Anhalt (59% each) and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (57%). What is particularly worrying, however, is that almost every second child under the age of four and a third of four to eleven year olds are out and about in the digital world without protection. Unsurprisingly, however, the older the children are, the more often people abandon age-appropriate filters.
“The results of the entire ESET study show that the offspring are young and connected. Almost every child can access a digital device and the internet, which the corona pandemic has made even worse,” says Ildikó Bruhns, Safer Kids Online project manager. “In addition to schools and kindergartens, parents are also asked to prepare their children for the digital world. The fitter the adults themselves are in terms of media literacy and technical know-how, the more they can support their offspring in using media in a child-friendly way.”
Media competence: More trust in children as teachers
The fact that only 45 percent of parents use parental controls for the Internet may be because they trust their children to have far more media skills than teachers do. This not only includes being able to use digital devices, but also using them sensibly and responsibly. The older the children, the more confidence they have in their abilities. But a total of 60 percent of those surveyed attest that even those under four and four to seven year olds have excellent to good knowledge of the Internet and media. For eight to eleven year olds it is even 75 percent. Only one in five respondents rated their knowledge as average to poor, most commonly among four to seven-year-olds (32%).
In comparison, teachers and carers fare much worse when it comes to media and internet literacy: only half receive the rating excellent to good. The people of Baden-Württemberg (71%) have the greatest trust in media education. More than a third of parents say teachers still have a lot of catching up to do, especially among teenagers. The most critical voices here come from Saxony-Anhalt (40%).
Parents have even more trust in their own skills than in the skills of teachers and their children: 83 percent of those surveyed rate their own media and Internet skills from excellent to good. Berliners (92%) and Thuringians (88%) in particular have the best results. Only one in seven sees a need to catch up on this topic. The difference between the parents is striking: almost 20 percent of the fathers rate their level of knowledge as excellent, compared to only eight of the mothers. Men are also ahead when it comes to the rating “very good”: this is how a third of those surveyed rate themselves, but only a quarter of women. The latter most often rate their media skills as good (44%) or average (17%).
Better sweets than digital entertainment
Anyone who thinks that young people invest all their pocket money in digital media has done the math without the landlord: sweets are clearly ahead with a quarter. Chocolate & Co. are particularly popular with eight to eleven year olds (38%) and 12 to 14 year olds (37%). About a fifth invest their pocket money in toys, jewelry, clothing and cosmetics or buy food to take on the go. One in six spends their cash on comics, books or magazines. Only one in ten spends their savings on in-app purchases, for example on gaming apps, with 12 to 17 year olds most often at 14 percent. Especially in the east of the country, around one in six children purchases additional services or content in apps. And only one in seven people use their pocket money to buy prepaid cards, such as those for Google Play.
The entire ESET study “Children on the Internet” and further information can be found here: ESET study “Children on the Internet”
About the survey
The data used is based on a representative online survey that YouGov conducted on behalf of ESET Germany. Across Germany, 1,030 parents took part in August/September 2022. The results have been weighted and are representative of families with children under 18 years of age.
Also read: Media literacy: Study shows shocking results
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )