Quarter of NZ’s young have had upsetting online experiences

AUCKLAND: A quarter of New Zealand children were upset by an online experience in the past year, while 36% were exposed to violent or gory images and a fifth to selfharm methods, a survey has found.

Netsafe’s third Global Kids Online report, released today examined children’s experiences on the internet and parents’ perceptions of what they were exposed to.

The survey of more than 2000 children aged 917 and their parents found a mismatch between children’s upsetting experiences online and their parents’ awareness of it.

Overall, 25% of children said they had been bothered by an online experience in the past year, while only 19% of parents knew about it.

While the gap was significant, study authors Dr Edgar Pacheco and Neil Melhuish said it was consistent with international research.

Netsafe chief executive Martin Cocker said the gap was ‘‘not shockingly wide’’.

‘‘We’re only talking about a relatively small group of parents who are not aware.

‘‘People will be mostly reassured that gap is not as big as they thought.’’

Mr Cocker said the real challenge lay in finding those families where a gap existed and seeing how they could support them.

The survey also found parents and caregivers of 1317yearolds significantly underestimated their child’s exposure to harmful online content such as violent images, hate speech, selfharm and drug taking.

It found 36% of children in that age group had seen gory or violent images online, 26% had been exposed to drug taking and 20% had seen ways to physically hurt themselves.

Parents’ awareness of their children’s exposure to the same thing was 12% to 15% lower in each category.

When it came to ways of committing suicide, 17% of children reported being exposed to it, while 15% said they had come across ways to be very thin.

Parents’ awareness was 9% lower for both.

Mr Cocker said it was understandable parents were less aware of the more harmful content their children had come across.

‘‘I think the more serious the harm, the more significant it is for a young person to share that with anybody.

‘‘The reality is that it’s those serious incidents that, as a parent, we are trying to prepare for.’’

Also concerning to Mr Cocker was that 4% of parents were unaware their child had met someone facetoface whom they had first met online.

While the vast majority of people they met online were going to be ‘‘perfectly reasonable’’, Mr Coker said parents should always be nearby in such a situation as ‘‘somewhere amongst all those is someone who is going to hurt a child’’.

As for the number of children who had reported upsetting or harmful experiences, Mr Cocker said he would have expected it to be higher.

‘‘Harmful content goes viral just like positive content. In fact, sometimes faster than positive content.’’

Mr Cocker said parents were trusted sources of support and the preteenage bracket was an important intervention period to teach children online safety skills.

That was good news, because nearly half of parents surveyed believed they had the skills to help their child deal with risks and harm online.

For those parents concerned about how to keep their children safe, Mr Cocker said the recipe was not that complicated.

‘‘It’s learning about your children’s lives, understanding the risks and having a deliberate conversation with them about the risks.’’

But he acknowledged that in reality it could be quite difficult to get children to open up and because of that Netsafe had developed an online parent safety tool kit to provide advice and support. — The New Zealand Herald