How shall we better protect children online? And what do Chinese parents think about their children’s online safety? To answer these questions, a new report presented findings from an online survey of 593 Chinese parents with children aged 6-10. While Chinese parents showed some level of privacy concerns, their primary concerns were still around inappropriate content and screen time. Online short-video platforms (e.g. TikTok) played an important role in Chinese young children’s daily life, however, many of these apps are not always age-appropriate.
Dr Zhao and Ge Wang provided an invited blog post for LSE Parenting4Children [post].
As the generation growing up at the frontier of the Internet of Things, children’s daily activities are constantly shifting from ’offline’ to ’online’. Both the amount of information, and the value of it has been continuously increasing, and the risk of children’s privacy being compromised or improperly exploited is growing. China is now home to 169 million internet users under the age of 18, with 89.5% of children under-13 reported to have access to the internet. While mobile phones are still the main device teens use to go online (92%), tablets (37.4%) and smart TVs (46.7%) are among the devices most frequently used, and they have been used more by teenagers than other age groups [1]. Alongside this there have been growing concerns over the risks that they face online. For those under 18, 30.3% have had exposure to inappropriate content and 15.6% have experienced online bullying. [2] However, these privacy-related risks have not been looked at or discussed. A new report however presented findings from an online survey of 593 Chinese parents of children aged 6-10, which focused on understanding Chinese parents’ awareness and management of their children’s online privacy risks.
Key findings of the report:
- Digital devices were widely adopted in Chinese families. Parents showed some privacy concerns in general; however, their primary concerns were still about the content their children might have access to and screen time control, rather than what personal information might be collected about their children.
- Parents’ concerns are often influenced by their own digital experiences. Parents with more digital experience expressed a higher level of concern about their children’s privacy online.
- Online short-video platforms (e.g. TikTok) played an important role in Chinese young children’s daily life. However, many of these apps are not always appropriate for children’s age. Online learning was reported to be another major reason for children being online. We found that schools and teachers played an important role in children’s choice of apps, and this is different from UK children.
- Most parents used a range of means to safeguard their children online, however mostly through restrictive approaches. Only a small proportion of them reported (26.6%) regularly discussing privacy issues with their children and very few of them (10%) had sufficient awareness of the potential privacy risks of their children’s daily online activities. This shows that parents would benefit from more support and resources to help them safeguard their children online.
The full post can be read here [1].
