This chapter is designed to interpret and understand the difference between parents and their children with reference to their usage of internet and its influence in their daily lives. Teenagers between the age of 13 and 16 are the most vulnerable and most prone to cyber bullying and other crimes. Children's effective use of internet relies heavily on the factors surrounding them that not only includes their parents but also their peer and school and neighbourhood. Parents believe that depriving their children of internet access or tools can stop them from accessing the web or restrict their skills and learning about social media. They do not believe that internet use affects family relations negatively. The chapter presents a study undertaken of parents and their children. This presents differences in perception and understanding of internet usage.
Top1. Introduction
India’s journey on the path of economic reforms has transformed it to one of the world’s fastest growing economies. This development and growth have come at its own cost. Internet has become the part and parcel of our daily lives. Especially for the people living in cities from travel to food to education to office to banking – everything is now linked with a smartphone. Children are also not excluded from the grip of this tech environment. Even from before their birth to everyday monitoring of a new born, from school admission to school assignments – everything is now online. And with time we are seeing more children even of very tender age being exposed to digital world in the name of online studies and learning. Post Covid 19, internet usage has spread to every stratum of society including the children of all ages.
Interesting study by Bianchi and Robinson 1997 discussed time children spend on reading or recreational activities. The study also found difference in the time spend on watching television among various groups. Very obvious that time television was more popular electronic device for information and entertainment access. As time changed this source also changed. Chapman, 2002 commented on Internet as a channel with vast pool of resources, scholarly articles and information where it varies a depending upon the contents, aim, target group, reliability etc. User must be very carefully accessed the information and use the information available with due care. The technology has enabled the reach of information, webpage, internet, sites, blogs to every home, every institute and street.
The Internet has a major impact on us and with time its impact are becoming clearer. Specially children where it’s providing immense material for learning and knowledge while exposing children to potentially negative content. Internet has penetrated into lives of people and offers great utility. It is important for inclusion of access to information and technology. However this comes with harmful effects to name few exposure to violence, sexually coloured content, hate messages. The websites causing more harm than good include those dedicated to negative content such as pornography, violent online games, online gambling, and so forth. These sites are easily accessible without restrictions. Kids are also exposed to numerous obscene pop-up banner ads and extensive pornographic content on the touch of seemingly innocent key words into a search engine, for example, fly, cock, pussy, Spears etc. For teens, their school research projects demand lots of internet surfing and that’s where the risk is maximum. Many sites that play free videos mostly have obscene popup ads that take kids to porn sites. Unaware of the foreseen risks, children tend to explore the dark web.
Despite potentially severe negative impact of internet, parents fail to communicate with their children about the risks involved. Ignorance is to the extent that parents are not even aware of what their children are doing online. There is a huge gap between what parents think their children are doing online and what their children are doing. There are major concerns that inappropriate and explicit Internet contents may jeopardize the health and safety of our children. The study of risks of exposure can only be understood by knowing the level of exposure, what, when and how much are the children exposed. It helps identify the extent, direction, angle and mental impact internet is having on our future generation. Therefore in the landmark study done by Malta Communication authority commissioned by University of Malta, recommended supervised or trained use of internet.