Kids and the Internet

An interesting piece from the Center for Media Research last week on kids and their Internet behavior. It dealt with a survey conducted by Common Sense Media in conjunction with The Benenson Strategy Group. Bottom Line: there is a big disconnect between what kids are doing on the Internet and what parents think they're doing, according to the survey.

Here are a few examples:

• Sixteen percent of parents think that their kids have sent information over the Internet that they shouldn't have. In the survey, 28 percent of kids copped to having done that,.
• Responding parents said that eight percent of their kids posed as adults in chat rooms, IM-ing, etc. The real number: closer to 18 percent
• Four percent of parents thought their kids has signed on to someone else's social networking site using a purloined password, when reality was six times greater than that-24 percent

Perhaps one of the riskier behaviors having gained a lot of media attention over the last year is posting nude or semi-nude self-images on the Internet. Only two percent of parents thought kids do that. Reality: 13 percent of the juvenile respondents say it happens.

The survey provides a glimpse of overall teenage Internet habits. More than half of kids surveyed visit a social networking site (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) more than once a day, and about of half of those kids visit ten or more times a day.

A third of the juvenile respondents said they visit gaming sites more than once daily, about double the number that visit Internet teen chat rooms.

But about seven percent are frequent visitors to sites that that provide homework help-about the same number that visit sports-related sites.

In 2004, Chris Anderson wrote an article called "The Long Tail" where he applied the statistical model of consumer behavior (diminishing but long-lasting effect) to the phenomenon that Internet information. Essentially after you post it, Internet information can live for a very long time and be accessible to millions of people. In the "Long Tail" category, nearly 40 percent of kids said they had posted something they later regretted, a quarter of respondents had sent pictures they're now not sure they would want shared, or had posted information they would not normally have shared with millions of strangers.

Call it Poster's Remorse.

Just thought you might like to know.