School's started and kids all over Canada are already sacked with homework and similar trappings of scholastic life. But according to a new survey from Toronto-based media awareness consultancy Mediacs and Microsoft Canada Co.'s MSN division, parents should be hitting the books themselves, too, in one particular subject, at least: keeping tabs on what their kids are doing online.

"In general, kids' media activities over the last five years are mostly ungoverned – their online activities even more so, because for the most part parents are quite intimidated by technology," says Mediacs managing director Debbie Gordon. And, she adds, with parents taking a hands-off approach to their kids' use of the Internet, that means most of their role models and knowledge sources are other kids.

"For the most part, kids have self-educated: they learn from each other how to navigate technology, how to navigate games, what kinds of programs to download, how to use MSN," Gordon says. "They're making their way through this terrain pretty much on their own."

In this era of pervasive communications and affordable high-tech toys, parents get a C+ when it comes to keeping abreast of how their kids are using the Internet, according to the Mediacs survey. Incredibly, 13% of the 671 grade 5, 6, 7 and 8 students interviewed earlier this year said they spent five hours or more out of each day online.

"That's a really big number," notes Gordon. "A lot of kids are really quite locked into this online world." That figure doesn't include TV watching, offline computer and console gaming, and other forms of passive entertainment. The most common level of online use was one to two hours a day, given by 40% of children surveyed. The survey was given to children attending Mediacs workshops in Winnipeg and the Greater Toronto Area from March to May. Respondents were more or less evenly split between boys and girls.

The use of instant messaging software such as MSN can be especially worrisome for parents, because it puts kids in touch with an extended, permission-based community of online users – most of which are anonymous or fictitiously-named people whose real identity and intentions, malevolent or otherwise, are not known to kids. Meanwhile, the survey found that nearly three-quarters of the kids interviewed – 72 per cent – are using instant messaging regularly as part of their online experience.

More than a quarter of those interviewed – 26% – said they had a computer in their bedroom, a fact that can make parental supervision a challenge. Only 13% responded that the computer they most often used was located in a prominent and visible area of the home, such as a den or family room. Nearly a third – 31% per cent – said that their parents didn't know the full extent of their online activities, but expressed trust in their judgment anyway, while less than half of respondents said they had rules governing their use of the Internet.

But while children are often more adept at navigating the Internet than their parents, they're not necessarily more aware of the dangers. Gordon cites the example of numerous children who enter online contests promising desirable prizes such as free digital music players. "Not only have [they] now downloaded spyware onto their computers, they've shared a ton of personal private information that's going to make somebody else money," she says. "Most of it's benign and it's not going to come back to them, but they've given out who they are."

Gordon says one surprise couched in the survey data was the number of kids using webcams: initially, she had pegged the figure at about a quarter of all kids. "In fact, it's 37%, which is a really high number," she says. Granted, most children are using them for benign purposes, such as to talk to family members in other parts of the world, but not always. "In every school, there's always a story about some girl who's been in her bra on the webcam."

With buzzwords like "social media" dominating pop culture and the digital lifestyle, it's perhaps not surprising that 42% of the kids surveyed said they had some form of online profile through services such as Myspace, Xanga, Piczo, Nexopia or MSN Spaces. Gordon notes that there is often intense competition between users of such services, who value each other essentially by how many friends or buddies they have associated with their profile. "They absolutely beam if they reach the 200-person mark, because it's a popularity contest," she says. "The thinking is, the more buddies the better." The problem with that thinking is that it often leads to kids approving requests from users wanting to become buddies before they've actually checked out who the user is.

More ominously, 72% of those who did have an online profile had no idea whether the personal information featured in their profile – including the city they reside in, the name of their school and other identifying information – was set to be viewable by the general public, by recognized friends only, or whether it was private. What's worse, many parents have no idea what information their children are providing online.

"A lot of kids don't want to show [their websites or profiles to their parents], because if there's something that's questionable, they don't want to risk losing computer time, which is the worst punishment any child can endure today," Gordon says. "I've been looking at kids' personal websites for years, and some of the stuff I've seen is incredible. It's like a menu for a pedophile."

Girls are especially vulnerable to online predators, Gordon notes, because they're apt to feel more pressured by body image and other media messages than boys. "They love to portray themselves as really sexually aware animals," she says. "You see a lot of glitter words on young girls' websites – sexy, Playboy bunnies, et cetera…I was dying as I was seeing these grade 5, grade 6 girls presenting themselves as sexual objects. It was really concerning."

However, a spate of stories about adults stalking children on the Web has heightened many parents' awareness of kids' activities online, Gordon says, and that should soon translate into tighter restrictions and a more active interest in how their children use the Internet. "A year ago, I would have [given] parents a D," she notes, "so it's getting better."

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