"Up until now, e-safety campaigns have focused on preparing young people to face dangers posed by strangers online," said Professor Rosalind Gill from King's College, one of the authors.<br /><br />"Our report suggests that the focus needs to shift to include the much more complicated issue of peer-to-peer communication and the difficulties and isolation young people experience in negotiating this," she added.<br /><br />Jon Brown, head of the sexual abuse programme at the NSPCC, said the revelations were disturbing.
For a Web company, it's best to just not deal with kids. They don't have much money -- no credit card accounts, as a rule -- and they're a toxic mess when it comes to regulations. Who wants to deal with changing COPPA regulations and the extra hassle of protecting kids' privacy when they don't have to?
A poll conducted for Safer Internet Day by BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat found that only 6% of 13-19-year-olds were likely to accept a friends request from someone they did not know, while 69% said that they understood how to change their Facebook privacy settings.<br /><br />Often it is parents that really need educating.<br /><br />"The parents are a lot more savvy now than when we set up Club Penguin because they have become users," said Mr Merrifield.
he project is aimed at studying the post-desktop media ecology that children inhabit and its consequences on young people’s online experiences. More specifically, the project is articulated in the following objectives…