Study: Kids on the Net

With the end of elementary school, and certainly in middle and high school, the mobile phone begins to become a “heavy addiction for children,” say teachers and professors.

Excessive use of the Internet by children is visible to the naked eye. This is the most common problem that teachers have with their students and the pandemic has exacerbated it. The Internet poses a danger to minors who do not have the necessary assistance. Teachers find it difficult to deal with difficult situations that students often find themselves in, such as sexual harassment/seduction or online abuse, overwork and cyberbullying.

Parents also view the Internet as something “foreign” and therefore do not know how to help their children deal with online dangers. Most parents are unable set limits on the use of mobile phones and tablets by children. Children, lost in the world of the Internet, have no measure, they abuse it, receiving in return negative consequences, both for their health and for the risks that the World Wide Web poses.

Of particular concern are results of a large-scale survey in the form of an anonymous online questionnaire among 4,400 kindergarten, middle and high school teachers from across the country, conducted from December 2022 to January 2023 by the Hellenic Safe Internet Center, Technology and Research Foundation, in collaboration with the Panhellenic School Network of the Ministry of Education.

A serious problem is the excessive use of the Internet by children. According to the survey, when asked what are the most common problems they face in relation to the Internet and children, 68% of teachers answered that they are too busy, 59% and 50% – lack of boundaries on the part of parents and lack of supervision from their side, respectively. “This should worry both us and the responsible persons, but first of all the parents. They leave their children practically unsupervised while they “surf” the Internet. Our time requires children to communicate with the Internet, acquire digital skills. But they need to be creatively involved, and what we are seeing now is fruitless work,” said Ms. Katerina Psaroudaki, head of the Hellenic Safe Internet Center, in an interview with Kathimerini. “We notice that there is very little parent involvement in our educational programs,” she added.

• 65% of teachers in general education schools and 47% of primary school teachers realized that a student is facing fatigue problem. According to teachers, with the end of elementary school, and certainly in middle and high school, the mobile phone begins to become … a strong addiction. In fact, almost 59% of secondary school teachers say they don’t know how to manage it.

• In middle and high school, one in ten teachers (9%) realized or learned that a student had been the victim of online harassment/harassment. At the same time, 6% know that the student has been a victim of online abuse, i.e. seen photos or footage of sexual content. The corresponding percentage in primary education is 2% for online harassment/seduction and 0.5% for online abuse.

• 44% of teachers in general education schools and 23% of primary school teachers state that they have become aware that a student communicates to a greater or lesser extent with strangers on the Internet.

• 26% of secondary school teachers and 9% of primary school teachers say they have become aware of incidents of online bullying. At both educational levels, the majority (69%) were informed about the incident by the student himself, and 13% by another student.

• However, it is very disturbing that more than half of teachers at both levels of education (57% in the general population, 54% in elementary and 60% in secondary school) state that they do not know how to deal with situations of online sexual seduction in relation to their students.

• 42% of teachers (39% in primary school and 45% in secondary school) say they do not know how to deal with cyberbullying situations, with the majority of them being secondary school teachers (49%).

Eight out of ten teachers (79%) use the Internet in the learning process either daily or several times a week, and only 2% do not use it at all for course needs. However, as the Hellenic Safe Internet Center executives, who published the study on Safe Internet Day, said, teachers need support, more information and training as technology advances rapidly and their role is a catalyst in teaching kids how to use the internet properly.

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