[ecrea] 5th Alert from EU Kids Online

Welcome to the 5th Alert from EU Kids Online

Contents: Report Comparing Children's Online 
Opportunities and Risks; Best Practice report; EU 
Kids Online contributions to EC initiatives; 
Recent publications from EU Kids Online members; 
EU Kids Online data repository ? Update; Forthcoming.

Two new reports: online risks and methods
Report Comparing Children's Online Opportunities and Risks
Here is a selection of some of the findings from 
our latest report in addition to the ones on the 
prevalence of risks previewed in the last alert. 
The report compares recent European findings 
published across a range of countries, to address 
key research questions and hypotheses, as follows

Online access and use

The more parents use the internet, the more 
children do so also. Parents seem to use the 
internet both in order to encourage their 
children and because they have been encouraged to do so by their children.

It is teenagers, rather than children in general, 
who are the digital pioneers in Europe. While 
children aged 12-17 are more likely to use the 
internet than are parents (87% vs. 65%) this is 
not the case for those under 11 years old. Hence, 
for younger children, it is reasonable to expect 
that their parents will understand the internet 
sufficiently to guide their use, but this may not hold for teenagers.

Online opportunities

It is clear that while children use the internet 
as an educational resource, for entertainment, 
games and fun, for searching for global 
information and for social networking, sharing 
experiences with distant others other 
opportunities (e.g. user-generated content 
creation or concrete forms of civic 
participation), are less common.  However, 
arguably since children can climb a ?ladder of 
online opportunities?, beginning with 
information-seeking, games and communication, 
taking on more interactive forms of communication 
and culminating in creative and civic activities, 
then activities such as communication and games 
playing may not be ?time-wasting? but, instead 
constitute a motivational step on the way to more ?approved? activities.

Online risks

In several countries, a degree of distress or 
feeling uncomfortable or threatened was reported 
by 15%-20% of online teens, suggesting, perhaps, 
the proportion for whom risk poses a degree of harm.

Complicating policy interventions regarding 
online risk, it was suggested that increasing 
opportunities tends to increase risks, while 
decreasing risks tends to decrease opportunities.

Online attitudes and skills

Overall, the evidence supports the hypothesis 
that internet-related skills increase with age. 
This is likely to include their abilities to 
protect themselves from online risks although, 
perhaps surprisingly, this has been little examined.

There is growing evidence of the array of coping 
strategies children employ when faced with online 
risk, these are not yet systematically studied 
and nor is their effectiveness evaluated.

Age, gender and socioeconomic status

While internet use increases with age it often 
peaks in the early- to mid-teens.  In high use 
countries, children get online younger, and this has implications for risk.

Generally, it seems that older teenagers 
encounter more online risks than younger 
children, though the question of how younger 
children cope with online risk remains little researched.

There are also gender differences in risk: boys 
appear more likely to seek out offensive or 
violent content, to access pornographic content 
or be sent links to pornographic websites, to 
meet somebody offline that they have met online 
and to give out personal information; girls 
appear more likely to be upset by offensive, 
violent and pornographic material, to chat online 
with strangers, to receive unwanted sexual 
comments and to be asked for personal information 
but to be wary of providing it to strangers; both 
boys and girls are at risk of online harassment and bullying.

In almost all countries, higher SES households 
are more likely to provide their children with 
access to the internet, this resulting in greater 
or more frequent use among more advantaged 
children. It also appears that lower class 
children are more exposed to risk online.

Parental mediation of children?s online activities

There are differences cross-nationally in parents 
preferred strategy for mediating their children?s 
online activities ? including imposing time 
restrictions, sitting with their children as they 
go online and discussing internet use, tending to 
prefer these social strategies to technical 
mediation (filtering, monitoring software).

More consistent across Europe is the tendency for 
higher SES parents to mediate their children?s 
internet use, and for girls to be more subject to such mediation than boys.

With regard to age, the consistent finding is 
that of a U-curve: that parental mediation 
increases with age until the age of around 10-11 
years and then decreases again.

Classification of countries in terms of children?s online risk

The differences identified across countries were 
used to construct a classification of countries 
in terms of children?s online use and risk. Specifically:

[table remove]

This suggests that: (i) high use of the internet 
is rarely if ever associated with low risk; (ii) 
low use of the internet may be associated with 
high risk but not vice versa; (iii) high use, 
high risk countries are, for the most part, 
wealthy Northern European countries; (iv) medium 
use, high risk situations are characteristic of 
new entrants to the EC; and (v) Southern European 
countries tend to be relatively lower in risk, 
though there are differences among them. Putting 
this another way around, we might conclude that, 
as a broad generality, (i) Northern European 
countries tend to be ?high use, high risk?; (ii) 
Southern European countries tend to be ?low use, 
variable risk?, and (iii) Eastern European 
countries can be characterised as ?new use, new risk?.

There were national differences in parents? 
relative willingness to mediate their children?s 
television and the internet use. In Austria, 
Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain 
parents of internet users set rules for 
television more than they do for the internet. In 
Denmark, Estonia, Netherlands and Sweden, parents 
set more rules for the internet than for 
television. In Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland 
and the UK, parental rules are more or less 
equivalent. In short, in high use countries, 
parents mediate the internet more than they do 
television. In low use countries, by contrast, 
they are more likely to mediate television.

Next we considered factors that might help to 
explain the patterns that we found

Internet diffusion

Diffusion of the internet not only directly 
affects children?s access and use but also 
indirectly influences the range of online 
activities, parental mediation and, as a result, 
online-related risks and opportunities. One 
important finding is that gender and SES 
differences appear to be decreasing in the course of the diffusion process.

ICT regulation

Broadly speaking, the more internet users there 
are in a country, the more legislation there is 
regulating activities on the internet.

In countries where the internet is less common, 
more Government efforts are made to promote 
internet use, while once the internet becomes 
more common, risk awareness and then literacy 
initiatives gain priority on the policy agenda.

Public discourse

In all the countries what was common was the 
newsworthiness of risks compared to opportunities 
? in all countries over half of all articles 
reported solely risks, the average of all these 
countries being nearly two-thirds. In contrast, 
at most only a quarter of the media articles 
covered solely opportunities in any country and 
the average was less than a fifth.

Looking at different types of risk (content, 
contact, conduct) different national media have 
very varied levels of coverage of the three types 
of risk: content, contact and conduct. Hence, 
media coverage in different countries is 
sensitising people to different kinds of risk, 
which may have a bearing on the degree to which 
people in different countries think the various risks are prevalent.

One example of striking differences in the 
relative attention to certain risks is the media 
coverage of issues of sexuality, which is mainly 
coverage of pornography on the net. In some 
countries this aspect dominates the risk related 
media coverage (more than one third of all 
articles): Belgium, Greece, Spain, and the UK. In 
contrast, interest in this issue is shown to be 
very low in Norway, Estonia and Denmark. Apart 
from the influence of particular national 
histories (e.g. the paedophile cases in Belgium), 
this probably reflects different national 
concerns (at least in the media) about what 
images of sexuality children should be exposed to.

Attitudes and values

The countries can be classified according to the 
dimensions of individualism and collectivism: 1) 
UK, Ireland, Belgium with high/moderate 
individualism and moderate collectivism; 2) 
Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Portugal, and Czech 
Republic with low individualism and moderate 
collectivism; 3) Austria, Germany, Slovenia, 
Spain, Iceland, Italy, France and Greece with 
moderate individualism and low collectivism; 4) 
Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands with high 
individualism and low collectivism. There is a 
high correspondence between cultural values and 
the overall country classification based on 
children?s internet use and the degree of online 
risk. Countries of group 4) are high use 
countries with medium or high risk; countries of 
group 2) are medium or low use countries with 
high risk; countries within group 3) are medium 
or low use countries with medium or low risk; and 
countries within group 1), somewhat overlapping 
with group 4) are high (or medium) use countries with high or medium risk.

Another correlation can be found for the parents? 
rules relating to children?s use of the TV and 
the internet. Almost all countries, in which 
parents put more emphasis on the mediation of TV 
use, belong to group 3, which can be called ?the 
Catholic Europe?, whereas all countries in group 
4, ?the protestant Europe? clearly apply more rules for online use.

Educational system

With regard to the general level of education, 
Southern European countries show considerably 
higher rates of only pre-primary and primary 
education than Northern, Central and Eastern 
European countries. However, among the younger 
generations these differences are going to 
disappear. So far, cross country differences in 
children?s online use can be partly explained by 
different levels of general education: the higher 
the general education of a country, the higher its children?s online use.

Background factors

Urbanisation may shape children?s encounters with 
the internet and risk. Countries with large rural 
populations (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece) are also low use countries.

In terms of the role of the State, those 
countries classified as relatively 
interventionist tended to be low to medium on both use and risk

This report is now available on our website www.eukidsonline.net

Uwe Hasebrink, Sonia Livingstone and Leslie 
Haddon, (eds) Comparing Children's Online 
Opportunities and Risks across Europe: 
Cross-national Comparisons for EU Kids Online, a 
report for the EC Safer Internet Plus Programme, 2008.


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Best Practice report


The following report is also now available on our website www.eukidsonline.net



Bojana Lobe, Sonia Livingstone, Kjartan Olafsson 
and José Alberto Simões (eds) Best Practice 
Research: How to Research Children and Online 
Technologies in Comparative Perspective, a report 
for the EC Safer Internet Plus Programme, 2008.



Focusing mainly on the challenges of researching 
children, the report is in the form of frequently 
asked questions (FAQs) addressing the following areas

Designing the research
Sampling and recruitment
Methods and data collection
Approaches to data analysis
Reporting the findings


Each FAQ then has comments in the following sections:

What?s the issue?
Common practice
Questions to consider
Pitfalls to avoid
Further resources
Researcher?s experience (or instance of good or bad practice)


Apart from the report in PDF format, an 
electronic version of the report can also be 
found on the website along with examples of 
survey material demonstrating good practice.




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EU Kids Online contributions to EC initiatives



An EU Kids Online team is presenting at and 
participating in this year?s Safer Internet 
Forum. The PowerPoint can be found on our website www.eukidsonline.net



EU Kids Online participated in and has presented 
at the European Social Networking Taskforce, 
Brussels, which met on 26th June, 2008. The 
PowerPoint can be found on our  website www.eukidsonline.net



We also contributed to the EC consultation on 
?Age Verification, Cross Media Rating and 
Classification, Online Social Networking?. The 
document can be found on our  website www.eukidsonline.net






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 Recent publications from EU Kids Online members



Brandtzæg, P. and Heim, J. (2008) ?"Jeg liker 
ikke voldsspill?  - En studie av norske barns 
spillinnholdspreferanser og psykososiale 
faktorer? ("I don't like games with violence" - a 
study of game content preferences and 
psychosocial factors among children) Nordicom 
Information, Vol. 30, No.1, pp.77-85.



Brandtzæg, P. and Heim, J. (forthcoming, 2008). 
Children?s Electronic Gaming Content Preferences 
and Psychosocial Factors ? Is there a connection? Nordicom Review.



Livingstone, S., and Haddon, L. (2008) ?Risky 
Experiences for European Children Online: 
Charting Research Strengths and Research Gaps?, 
Children and Society, Vol. 22, pp.314-23.



Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, P., Kalmus, V. and Runnel, 
P. (2008) Creating content or creating hype: 
Practices of online content creation and 
consumption in Estonia. Cyberpsychology: Journal 
of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 1 
(Online). http://www.cyberpsychology.eu/view.php?cisloclanku=2008060202



Staksrud, E. (2008). Fairytale parenting. 
Contextual factors influencing children's online 
self-representation. In K. Lundby (Ed.), Digital 
Storytelling, Mediatized Stories: 
Self-representations in New Media (pp. 233-249). New York: Peter Lang.




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EU Kids Online data repository - Update



In our first year we analysed the entries 
collected in our database of studies (the 
repository) to examine the distribution of 
research and identify gaps, as reported in the 
document ?What do we know about children?s use of 
online technologies?.  At the start of October we 
plan to update that analysis since the number of 
entries has now doubled. If you know of any more 
studies of children and the internet that are not 
yet on this database, could you please let us know before October.




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Forthcoming



The next alert in March 2007 will discuss the 
findings of our working group looking at the 
factors shaping research in this field



EU Kids Online will host a Conference on Children 
and the Internet in June 2007 at the London 
School of Economics. The date will be announced on our website soon.


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Contact details

Please feel free to forward this message to other 
who may be interested. Anyone who wishes to be 
added to the list should email Panayiota Tsatsou at (P.Tsatsou /at/ lse.ac.uk).

Professor Sonia Livingstone and Dr Leslie Haddon
Department of Media and Communications
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
fax: +44 (0) 20 7955 7248
email: (s.livingstone /at/ lse.ac.uk) / (leshaddon /at/ aol.com)




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