European kids use the Internet when they are nine

Jan 23, 2011 by Dirk Singer

According to a major report by the London School of Economics – EUKidsOnline – 12% of European 9-16 year olds say that they have been bothered or upset by something on the internet.

At the same time, 6% of 9-16 year olds have been sent nasty or hurtful messages online, and 3% have sent such messages to others.

However, the report also says that since 19% have been bullied either online or offline (compared with 6% online), and 12% have bullied someone else either online or offline (compared with 3% online), it seems more bullying occurs offline than online. The authors conclude that Internet bullying among children happens less than we think it does, though arguably a ratio of 1/20 having been sent abusive messages is still quite high.

LSE’s report says that on average European children started using the Internet when they were nine – eight in the case of the UK and seven for Denmark and Sweden.

At the same time, the threshold at which kids start going online is dropping – while 16 year olds started using the Internet when they were eleven, nine year olds started using it as seven.

Kids learn tech skills before life skills

The increasing tech literacy of very young children is the subject of a campaign we’ve been working on at Rabbit for Internet Security company AVG (www.avg.com).

‘Digital Diaries’, looks at how childhood across North America, Western Europe and Australia / New Zealand is changing thanks to technology. The first stage in October showed that, on average, babies have an ‘online footprint’ at six months old.

Last week saw the second stage of the campaign, where mothers with kids aged 2-5 were given a list of tech skills and so called life skills? The results?

Small children today are more likely to be able to play a computer game than ride a bike, and more likely to be able operate a smartphone app than tie their own shoelaces. () There is also no gender divide among small children with young girls mastering computer and tech skills as quickly as young boys