Children and young people in Germany spend up to three hours per day online. In the BredowCast episode 49, Claudia Lampert and Kira Thiel talk about what children and adolescents do online, what risks they face and how their parents feel about the whole thing.
As part of the transnational European research project EU Kids Online, more than 1,000 children and their parents in Germany were interviewed about their online use in the summer of 2019. In the BredowCast, the authors talk about the most important findings of the representative study.
The study provides an insight into the online experiences of children and young people - both positive and negative. It shows how children assess their online literacies and how they perceive risks. In some questions, their answers differ significantly from those of their parents.
"For parents, the greatest concern is often that their children will be contacted by strangers on the Internet and that this will lead to contact in the real world," explains Claudia Lampert. "Children often do not even understand the problem. After all, they use the Internet to make contact with their peers or like-minded people. And meeting each other in real life seems perfectly normal".
Based on the findings, the study also formulates recommendations for action with regard to the protection, empowerment and participation of adolescents on the Internet. Roughly summarised by the authors Claudia Lampert and Kira Thiel in the BredowCast, they point out that "parents and children should talk a lot and very openly about online use."
Dr. Claudia Lampert is a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI). Her research interests include growing up in digital media environments.
Kira Thiel is a junior researcher at the HBI and works mainly in the project "EU Kids Online." Her resarch interests include (negative) emotions in adolescents' media use and, in particular, the associated coping behaviour.
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About the Study
