Child protection week starts today

David Heath
Sunday, 05 September 2010 18:01

Your IT - Home IT

Commencing today on Fathers' Day, Australia's National Child Protection Week promotes the belief that it is everyone's responsibility to make their community child friendly.  This applies to all aspects of childhood ranging from their physical environment to the time spent on-line.

Child Protection Week is coordinated nationally by The National Association to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect (NAPCAN) and covers all aspects of child safety; ranging from sexual abuse through to neglect and other forms of cruelty.

A very important part of Child Protection is the guarantee that children may use the Internet in safety.

A recent survey conducted by Lonergan Research and commissioned by Gizmo (a leading home computer support service) demonstrated the overall naivety of children when it comes to the Internet.

First released in June this year the survey results are still very important when considering all aspects of child protection; after-all any method we use to categorise types of abuse will almost always cut across actual instances.

The survey produced some rather obvious statistics:

Almost one in three (32%) children have seen images of naked people
29% have seen violent images
29% have played games rated MA15+
29% have been contacted by someone they don't know online
17% have been asked for personal details
14% have been teased or bullied online
7% have had someone post pictures or videos of them without their permission