Professor studies web use of 25,142 children

IU professor Christine Ogan presented results of a study titled “European Kids Online: Their Skills, Activities and Risks” on Friday.

Co-funded by the European Union and the London School of Economics and Political Science, research was conducted in 25 European countries in spring and summer 2010. Ogan, along with former IU associate professor Kursat Cagiltay and three graduate students, worked on the study in Turkey.

Data gathered through in-home interviews with 25,142 children ages 9 to 16 and their parents reflected the usage, activities and risk factors of children using the Internet.
“We also looked at how parents were mediating, what role the school had, as well as their peers,” Ogan said.

Ogan said the main purpose of the study was to gather statistics to promote a safer online environment for children.

“My big interest is in privacy,” she said.

The study showed that many European children were not knowledgeable about online skills such as how to change privacy settings in social networks, block messages and set filters.

Ogan said due to this lack of user knowledge, the government has censored many websites in Turkey.

“They censor right and left,” she said.

YouTube was censored for two years.

“My view is that it’s much better to educate children than to censor information,” Ogan said.

In addition to privacy, researchers reviewed the types of online content children were experiencing, including aggressive and sexual communication, pornographic material, bullying and racist hate speech.

Currently, the research teams are collaboratively writing a book about the
results.
“The Turkish team’s chapter of the book is on cognitive interviewing and cognitive development,” she said.

According to the interviewers’ assessment, only 52.3 percent of children understood questions “very well.”

“There’s a lot we don’t know about how kids read and answer questions,” Ogan said.

Due to the nature of the interviews, Ogan suggested that results could be flawed because children were uncomfortable with the face-to-face interviews or misunderstood certain questions. Additionally, questions about sensitive topics such as sexual images seen online could produce false answers.

However, even with its flaws, Ogan said she believes the study was worthwhile.

“We have enough standardization of procedures that inter-country comparisons will show up,” she said. The 25 countries involved can compare rates of issues such as online bullying and underage social networking usage. After this research was conducted, Australia and other countries have begun similar studies.

The study has also had policy implications. Countries have created workshops in schools about safe Internet practices and have written informative pamphlets.