NZ Kids Online - How much do we know?

This year I am out of the classroom as I received a Study Award from TeachNZ, so I am working on postgraduate research instead, through the University of Auckland.

The topic I am exploring is how New Zealand children are using the internet - how they approach risks of various kinds, what skills they have in facing these risks, and how this might relate to the Key Competencies in the NZ Curriculum that we try to impart in our classroom programmes. I intend to analyse the findings to identify the conditions for increased confidence and skill levels online in order to minimise the risk of harm and maximise the opportunities that the internet offers.

My research will seek to answer the question, “How are 9-12 year old children in New Zealand using the internet, what factors lead to increased self-confidence and competency in dealing with online challenges, and what are the implications of this for schools?”


Last year I had the opportunity to present at the ULearn Conference, looking at the importance of researching children's use of the internet in a New Zealand context. While I was there I recorded this EDtalk, which has recently been put online.

To be honest, recording this was even more nerve-wracking then giving the talk itself! Nevertheless, it was a good opportunity to articulate some of what I have been discovering.


When I was reading around this issue I was struck by how little research there was based on the New Zealand experience. There are some studies looking at teenage internet use, but as for children I had to go back as far as 2002 to find a decent size study. As we all know, the online world was quite a different place back then. In 2002, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter, youtube and even Gmail did not exist. And that’s without discussing the changes to web access via mobile devices such as the iPod Touch and games consoles since that time. Clearly the landscape has changed. 

Take Facebook for example. Consumer Reports ‘State of the Net’ survey last year found that, quote, “Of the 20 million minors who actively used Facebook in the past year, 7.5 million of them were younger than 13”, and that most of these accounts were unsupervised by parents. In fact, in the USA the number of parents who would allow their 10-12 year olds to have a Facebook account has doubled in the space of a year, according to Liberty Mutual's Responsibility Project. The same survey showed that most parents also expect teachers and schools to do more to deal with the fall out.

Clearly, whether we like it or not, this is something we as educators are going to have to invest time in, and we need to do this from a position of knowledge of our own context here in New Zealand. Research around online privacy and risk is of vital importance. The disproportionate media attention given to unusual but high profile examples of online danger can have too much influence on policy formation. New Zealand-based research will help to separate actual online practice from media-hype based on sensationalist (albeit serious) examples. It will, therefore, provide a robust and reliable benchmark that other researchers and policymakers might use to inform policy in regards to appropriate responses, both in schools and more broadly in society.

TMI? Children's disclosure of personal information online

The world in which children live is inherently full of risk. Some might argue that a risk-free childhood is no childhood at all. However, the ubiquity of the internet and social media in the lives of children today presents a range of risks which differ not so much in kind with those of the past, but in potential. The ease with which information, text and images can be stored, copied, manipulated, replicated and misused, (Livingstone and Brake, 2010) has created a need for vigilance and action on the part of parents and educators. 

Children's disclosure of personal information on social networking sites in New Zealand is an issue of high public interest, as revealed by the current media attention given to it, such as this report on Close Up  about adolescent use of Facebook. In addition, the 2010 report by the Privacy Commissioner, 'Individual Privacy and Personal Information', identified the information children put on the internet about themselves as the issue that caused most concern among respondents, as it also did in 2008. 

However,  it remains a desperately under-researched field, making it difficult for parents, educators and policy-makers to make informed decisions about how best to impart the skills needed for children to become good digital citizens, with a high level of awareness of their rights and responsibilities towards themselves and others.

Last year as part of my post-grad study I reviewed a lot of the literature around this issue and drew up a research proposal. Perhaps one of the most significant findings of a number of the articles I surveyed was that generally young people are using social networking websites responsibly and consistently with how they conduct their offline behaviour, and that the actual risk from online predators is very, very low. Yet the small percentage of those who do take privacy risks are of sufficient numerical size (considering the millions of users of social networking websites) to justify considerable concern from researchers, educators and parents (De Souza & Dick, 2008; Williams & Merton, 2008; Hinduja & Patchin, 2008).

Below is a summary of the research proposal I put together that highlights many of the key issues and how I would go about researching them.

TMI? Children's disclosure of personal information online on Prezi

A further implication of the literature that came through again and again is that any effort to increase privacy awareness and protection skills must include parents. Because many schools approach social networking websites with caution, or block them outright, young people tend to spend most of their online social networking time at home, or on mobile devices. Many studies show that parental supervision of online behaviours reduces the amount of risk-taking behaviour, but that the awareness and skill levels of those parents was often not sufficient to provide the support that young people needed (Ofcom, 2008; Berson et al., 2008; Sharples et al., 2009; De Souza & Dick, 2008; Berson & Berson, 2006; Steeves and Webster, 2008;

Youn 2005; Hinduja & Patchin, 2009; Wirth et al., 2009). 

Part of this is no doubt due to the rapid pace at which the technology and habits of use of young people change. It may well be that if a school wishes to be most effective in protecting its young people from the risks of personal information disclosure, then the school has a role to play in educating parents through seminars and workshops, and must see this work as a partnership. Hope (2002) and Ofsted (2010) both affirm the importance of schools and families working together in partnership, with schools needing to be proactive in initiating this partnership. The research mentioned above by the Privacy Commissioner, as well as the fact that increasing numbers of older adults are using social networking sites like Facebook, suggests that there could be considerable demand for such a programme.


How aware are you of how your students are using social networking sites? How does your school involve parents in digital citizenship education? All thoughts and comments welcome!