Poll: Is the internet good for children?

New research has revealed many young people across the UK believe they could be addicted to surfing.

With more gadgets and gizmos on offer than ever before, it becoming harder to persuade children there is more to life than playing games or talking to friends on chatrooms.

And that comes before very real concerns about the hidden world of cyber-bullying, in which youngsters are open to abuse and ridicule among their peers but in a virtual world that is completely hidden from parents.

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A new study has revealed that high numbers of youngsters take gadgets such as laptops, tablets and smartphones, to bed with them, using them to talk to friends, browse websites and play games.

The findings come as a new charter drawn up by the Tablets for Schools charity was published to encourage children to use the internet more wisely.

It suggests that young people should resist the temptation to take their device to bed and not use them as alarm clocks. They should also set time limits on their devices and unplug themselves at set points in the day or week.

The charity's survey, which questioned more than 2,000 11 to 17-year-olds, found that around two-fifths of those questioned said they "sometimes think they are addicted to the internet".

Older pupils were more likely to say they were sometimes addicted than young pupils.

And nearly two-thirds of pupils said they took their gadget to bed with them.

Of these, around two-thirds said they used their device at night to talk to friends, with others saying they used it to look at film and picture websites, play a game on their own, read and do their homework.

One 11-year-old girl told researchers: "I can never get off it, and at night I stay up for like two to three hours after I'm meant to be asleep."

Another youngster, a 12-year-old girl, said: "The internet nearly always controls my actions.

"I have been told that I am addicted to the internet, and prefer its company rather than being with other people. I feel lost without the internet."

And a third pupil said: "If I had no wi-fi I would have no life."

The poll found that 46 per cent of girls were more likely to say they sometimes felt they were addicted to the internet, compared to 36 per cent of boys.

It suggested that girls spent more time on social networks while boys said they spent more time playing games, with both genders finding it addictive.

And Shropshire Star readers agree with the charity, saying they are cautious about what their children do when they are online.

MumTracey-Louise sent us a message via Twitter to say: "It is a brilliant tool for homework and games although I never leave room when they are on the net."

Gurdeep Mann also tweeted in and said: "Our three-year-old old uses the internet for games and videos, but it's the internet and I get scared of her using it."

Caroline Lewis from the Abbey Foregate Post Office also tweeted to say: "I have an 11-year-old with an iPad, makes for interesting evenings!"

Other people think it should be the parents' responsibility to do more to curb their children's internet usage and protect them from the more adult material that can be seen.

On Facebook, Simon Meadows added: "Children are given to much free rein on the internet, looking at sites that have adult pop-ups and a lot of parents don't even know what their kids are looking at."

At the end of last year, parents were being encouraged to spend more time learning children's internet slang so they could understand what they were chatting about online.

Hundreds of abbreviations and codes are being used by young people to communicate with friends and strangers in the virtual realm.

The meaning of the screen-speak used on Blackberry Messenger, Facebook chat, texts and chat rooms like Instagram is aimed at appearing to be gobbledegook to the prying eyes of parents.

For example P911 means Parent Alert, MBM means Mum Behind Me, ASL means Age, Sex, Location? and RUS means Are You Single?

It is a fast and exclusive way for young people to talk privately without worrying about adults reading over their shoulder or checking their history.

The vast majority of conversations are little more than meaningless gossip among friends.

But internet safety groups are warning that paedophiles could be learning the new language and can use it to pose as children to target victims.

It is a risk that remains low, but one that parents are being urged to know about.

Some schools across Shropshire and Mid Wales have set up workshops for parents, informing them of the virtual world their children inhabit.

A new campaign to help children in the UK stay safe online was launched earlier this month by Unicef and BT.

Right Click: Internet Safety Matters is a partnership which will see volunteers go into 600 schools and hold workshops to educate parents, teachers and children about staying safe on the internet, potentially reaching more than 20,000 people.

Among the topics discussed will be how to protect yourself from cyber-bullies as well as setting up parental controls.

At the start of the year, a report showed that adult websites were also not doing enough to verify the age of users accessing pornography, with some as young as 12 having been able to easily bypass safeguards and access explicit video and images.

The latest statistics show that cyber-bullying has affected one in three children while the average number of devices with internet access per household has doubled in recent years.

The NSPCC has also seen a rapid increase in the number of children contacting ChildLine about online bullying, which leapt from 2,410 in 2011/12 to 4,507 in 2012/13.

Computer professions have added that parents need to do more to restrict the time their children are spending online.

Chris Pallett, director of Bespoke Computing based in Telford, said a survey released last year revealed the average number of devices being carried by a person in the UK was 2.7 devices.

Mr Pallett, an IT expert based on Stafford Park today urged parents to take responsibility for the time their children spent on such devices as iPads and smart phones. He said he believed "valuable social skills" were being affected by the increasing time children were spending on the internet compared to playing traditional games and spending time outdoors.

Mr Pallett said: "There is a strong belief that the growing number of gadgets in the home is dumbing down the children of today.

"The worry I have is the fact children are simply just consuming the content of the apps which have been created by others.

"The child isn't creating the content so therefore in years to come will these children have grown up into adults and have the inability to create their own idea or invention?

"Will everything have to be ready-made and presented to them rather than being created by them? It's a bit like a Lego set being presented as a ready-built castle rather than as a box of 50 pieces."

He added: "This content consumption has now found its way into our schools – I was only talking to the principal of a Telford school last week and they are exploring the use of tablets and laptops with delivering educational content.

"There is certainly advantages to this method of learning, and of course such mobile devices and the internet make business and leisure a much more pleasurable and productive experience at times."

But Mr Pallett said the impact on social skills needed considering.

"Twenty minutes per day is the recommended amount of time our children should be using technology gadgets but the majority of children are spending significantly more time than that and it is to the detriment of valuable social skills," he said.

"It's down to the parents of our children to take responsibility for the time being spent online, to ensure that valuable social skills are nurtured rather than left to fail."

Problems with children using the internet too much are filtering through to schools. Alan Morris, head of middle school at Abraham Darby Academy in Madeley, said they do a lot to help children understand the dangers of the internet.

He said: "We do talk about safety a lot, keeping safe, what's appropriate online, what not to access but what we don't specifically say anything about is restricting time online.

"Sometimes, if we're in a situation where a pupil seems overtired, they're not performing well, we'll bring the parents in for a meeting and we'll often find they say, 'Oh, he was on the computer til 3am,' or 'He was up using the Xbox til 2am', and in those situation we will give the parents guidance on strict limits.

"With my own children, I encourage them to use it but when it comes to bedtime everything's off and I think a few too many parents say, 'It is all right you can take it to bed with you.'"

How to make sure your children are protected online:

• Set parental controls: Lots of gadgets and apps now come with inbuilt ways to stop your children accessing what they shouldn’t. On the BBC iPlayer you can set a password. Some tablets like the Amazon Kindle Fire also come with a way to restrict the time children are allowed to spend on certain features and will lock them out.

• Supervise them: You don’t necessarily need to sit over your children’s shoulders, but make sure children are using their gadgets in the room when you’re present. Try and stop them from taking things like iPads or handheld games consoles to bed so you can make sure they’re getting enough sleep and aren’t tempted to switch it on in the middle of the night.

• Teach Stranger Danger: Children need to know that not everyone they speak to online is a friend. Try to explain to them about how people can hide themselves online and make sure they know about the information they shouldn’t post online.

• Teach them what to ignore: Cyber bullying is becoming a bigger problem as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter become larger and larger. It is important that children know how to block unwanted messages and report the people who send them to the webmasters.

• Teach them that access is a privilege: Having a computer is not a right, it is a treat and spending time playing online should be seen as a reward.Children shouldn’t be allowed to use their computers constantly.

' Supervision of internet use is the way forward':

Helen Culshaw, mother of a 10-year-old son Thomas and seven-year-old daughter Ella, is director of Ascendancy Internet Marketing in Shifnal.

She said although the internet is the base of her business, the home and family relationship with the internet is different. She said parents should monitor their child's usage and should be present when they are online.

Ms Culshaw, who lives with her husband and their two children in Muxton, Telford, said: "My two children have access to both tablets and laptops at home which of course they use to access the internet."

But would the home be without the internet and the gadgets?

"The devices and the internet are extremely useful for projects and homework but I have taught my children to ensure they look at several sources of information as not everything is factually correct.

"My children definitely aren't addicted to the internet but they would miss it if it was cut off, of course, but so would I.

"I certainly wouldn't let either of them take the tablet to bed with them as that is the time for sleeping – not a time to re-activate the brain.

"I know some would argue there's no difference between reading a hardcopy book and an on-line book in bed but I would say the electronic device stimulates the brain further with the lights and alert noises so keeps the child's brain active rather than allowing it to relax," she said.

'Youngsters do rely on it a bit too much':

The internet is now an invaluable part of every day life, and one it is almost unavoidable in our day-to-day dealings.

Teachers are now doing more and more to try and make sure pupils are safe during their time online.

They say the message to pupils is that the web can be an amazing educational resource – but that there are dangers within.

Alan Morris, head of middle school at Abraham Darby Academy in Madeley, Telford, said staff there work hard to educate pupils about how to be savvy on the world wide web.

But he also agrees the younger generation do spend too much time on the net. He said: "I'm an old fuddy-duddy and I'm a firm believer in getting outside with your mates and talking face-to-face.

"From my point of view, youngsters do rely on it a bit too much

Obviously it isn't in every lesson. The children do still need to use a pen and paper, but we do encourage them to use the internet and it is important that they know how to use it."

Mr Morris said one of the school's big concerns is cyber bullying and they do a lot of work to try and protect their pupils online, particularly on social networking sites.

"We do send letters, we have assemblies, we also have a good relationship with the police who help us out.

"Because of that the school can be quite proactive with problems out of hours."