INCREASED INTERNET use and the prospect of children going online at earlier ages were challenges that could not be tackled solely by a restrictive approach to usage, Dr Brian O’Neill of Dublin Institute of Technology’s faculty of arts and tourism has said.
Dr O’Neill, who is the national contact for EU Kids Online, the Europe-wide project investigating children’s internet use, was speaking at the Merriman Summer School at the weekend.
He said that national data compiled last year for the European survey showed that children’s internet access via mobile devices and games consoles was growing and there was a trend of younger children going online and of accessing social networking sites. The average time spent online by children aged between nine and 16 was one hour, and the average age of first internet use was nine.
“Overall, if you take the UK as the comparator, their average age for the same age range is, in fact, seven. So the trend is downward.
“This feature of younger and younger usage is being taken quite seriously.
“There is an important message there for educationalists for some of the strategies that are being used and for companies who will have an interest in and responsibility around younger people’s internet use,” he said.
There were two policy discourses at odds with one another in the debate on internet use, he pointed out. One was about electronic inclusion and access and the other was around mediation and protection.
But because the internet was by its nature unregulated, there needed to be a focus on building skills so that children could negotiate the internet responsibly.
Dr O’Neill said a strategy needed to be built around “a focus on empowerment rather than restriction of children’s usage, emphasising responsible behaviour and digital citizenship, treating children as a competent, participatory group . . . [and] . . . encouraging self-governing behaviour”.
“It is a challenge but it is an absolutely necessary one,” he said.
While there were international efforts to improve trust and security around the internet, it was recognised that, more and more, it was down to individual conduct and behaviour to use the internet to its potential.
“We are a small English-speaking country on the periphery but we have terrific potential in the digital space,” he added.