Parent awareness of the internet dangers on their children

This diploma thesis deals with risks of the internet and with dangers that can occur when using the internet and modern technologies. The number of users increases every day, especially among children and teens who are the ones that are the most exposed to the various risk factors. The internet is no longer used on home computers only, but can also be accessed from anywhere by any child or teen who has a smart phone or a tablet. The thesis introduces quite a few dangers that we must pay attention to or be aware of their existence while using the internet. Of course, this is not enough, we also have to know how to protect ourselves from them and make sure that the usage of the World Wide Web will be safe. Organizations and projects that deal with the safe usage of the internet are also presented in this thesis. In the empirical part of the paper, I wanted to establish, to what degree the parents aware are of these dangers and how do they control their children regarding the internet. The research has shown that more than half of children aged 11–14 uses the internet every day, some of them even more times a day. 40 % of the children aged 8–10 are also daily users of the internet. Parents listed quite a few restrictions that are given to their children when they are using the internet. The highest three restrictions are those regarding making personal data public, time spent on the internet, and restriction on online shopping. Less than half of the parents uses parent control programs to control what their children are doing on the internet. More than three quarter of the parents says that they are well-informed about the internet risks, however, we did not check to what extent are they truly informed. The important part is the parents’ awareness that computers, smart phones and tablets do not only bring benefits and entertainment with them, but can also present various risk factors to children and teens that use them without any control, and these risks can be noticed by the parents too late, which can lead to more serious consequences. Not only parents, but also social pedagogues and other pedagogical workers can do a great deal of things to inform and educate children as well as their parents on the safe usage of modern technologies. The school system itself – that nowadays almost demands for children to use the internet for school work – should pay more attention to educating pupils in the field of safe internet usage