In a research titled Tweens and Technology Report 2013, McAfee has pointed out the internet habits of pre-teens which has revealed a lot about the Indian kids’ online activities. It has come to light that tweens in India are regularly logging on to the internet and 1 in 3 kids would miss it and even their phones if it went missing for even a day.
The said survey was carried out in some major India cities and on 1000 children who fall in the age group of 8 to 12 years. On an average, these kids stay online for about 2 hours in a day and 45 percent of the people even stay on the web after 8 in the night. The medium also varies and the analysis reveals that 61 percent tweens use desktop, while 40 percent and 68 percent pre-teens rely on tablets as well as mobile phones, respectively.
And that’s not all. It has been found out that desktop is the preferred option for assignments and homework, whereas tablets are pre-dominantly used for playing games and sending pictures. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Skype play a huge role in these children’s internet activities. Even though most of these kids are underage for Facebook, they have taken their parents’ help in joining the SNS. 73 percent of them are even friends with their folks.
In spite of this, the security measures taken by them are not adequate and most of the tweens have passwords that are risky or low on security. 58 percent tweens fall in this category. About half of them have shared their personal information on Facebook and 88 percent kids upload their pictures without any qualms. Taking to strangers is not something that is very prevalent, however, 36 percent pre-teens engage in it.