Interesting study released by McAfee finds:
63 per cent of teens said they know how to hide what they do online from their parents. 43 per cent have closed or minimized the browser at the sound of a parental step, 32 per cent have cleared the browser history when they have finished using the computer, 16 per cent have created private e-mail addresses or social networking profiles and 11 per cent have unlocked/disabled/ parental/filtering controls
The study isn’t online – you have to ask for it. But a pretty reputable firm in Harris conducted the survey with a sample size of 1,000 so this pretty sound. I would be curious to know how these kids are disabling filters. My hunch would be that these are Windows workstations that are set up with only a single user with administrator rights – making disabling pretty easy. I wonder how many teens are really using proxies, because I suspect the number is small, but to date, there has been no empirical research on how widespread the use of proxies to defeat filters by teens really is, so we don’t know.
–David
Filed under: Filtering, Internet Safety
“I wonder how many teens are really using proxies, because I suspect the number is small, but to date, there has been no empirical research on how widespread the use of proxies to defeat filters by teens really is, so we don’t know. ”
Actually this is not true
I-Safe did a study in school year 2006 where 170,000 students completed assessment surveys.
The findings revealed:
- Males in grades 5-12 are more likely than females to have circumvented internet filtering software via proxies in school (22% to 16%)