One in five Maltese children have reported receiving requests of a sexual nature over the internet while one in four received sexually explicit messages, a new European Union study has revealed.
The study found that Maltese children spent the second highest amount of time on the internet on their smartphone or tablet, with over three hours a day (194 minutes).
Norwegian children spent more than three-and-a-half hours on the internet.
The EU Kids Online 2020 survey, carried out by the London School of Economics and Political Science, took the form of interviews with nine to 16-year-olds across 19 European countries. The data was collected between autumn 2017 and summer 2019 from more than 25,100 children by national teams from the EU Kids Online network.
It found that Malta had the highest percentage of respondents who claimed to have experienced some form of abuse while surfing the net on their smartphone or tablet.
Answering a question on whether anything had ever happened online that bothered or upset them in some way which made them feel upset, uncomfortable or scared, 45 per cent of Maltese children answered in the affirmative, as opposed to the seven per cent who said ‘yes’ in Slovakia.
For most children across Europe, smartphones are the preferred means of going online. This often means that they have ‘anywhere, anytime’ connectivity, with the majority of children reporting using their smartphones daily or almost all the time.
The findings reveal a substantial increase in both the proportion of smartphone-using children and the amount of internet use compared with the EU Kids Online survey in 2010.
Malta was not part of the 2010 survey so results cannot be compared.
In many countries where comparisons can be drawn, the time that children spend online each day has almost doubled.
In Spain, the time increased from about one to three hours per day while in Norway it went up from two to three-and-a-half hours.
The time that children spend online each day has almost doubled
The study found that smartphone use increases with age in Maltese children, with about half of the younger ones aged between nine and 10 accessing the internet through a mobile phone. This number increases to nine out of every 10 children between the ages of 15 and 16.
Watching videos, listening to music, communicating with friends and family, visiting a social networking site and playing online games top the list of activities that children do on a daily basis.
Seventy per cent of those aged 15 to 16, admitted to having seen sexual content online in the preceding year. Almost a quarter of nine- to 10-year-olds and just over a third of 11- to 12-year-olds said they were very upset by these images. However, 21 per cent of children aged between nine and 16 did not speak to anybody about an online experience that had disturbed them.
Friends (39 per cent) and parents (42 per cent) were the main source of support in cases when they did seek help. The percentage of children who did nothing when facing such problems remains high, with 33 per cent ignoring the problem or hoping that it would go away while 30 per cent said they simply closed the website or app.
In most countries, over half of all the children use social networking sites at least weekly but not all children do so – half of Spanish children and just over 40 per cent of those in France, Germany and Malta never or hardly ever visit a social networking site.
Although it is commonly believed girls favour socialising online, the survey showed that there are only small or no gender differences in visiting social networking sites in most countries. On the other hand, playing games online is still gendered with around twice as many boys as girls playing games online daily in most countries.
Of the interviewed children, 89 per cent said they use the internet every day at home.
Only five per cent of 15- to 16-year-olds use the internet at school, which may reflect less openness to technology in the classroom. Internet use at school is higher among students between the ages of nine and 10.
In Estonia, France, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia and Slovakia, girls are slightly more likely to access the internet from their smartphones several times a day than boys.
Thirty-five per cent of children aged nine to 16 made contact with people online they had never met offline. Around half of these children later met in real life the people they had come to know online. The size of the country is possibly one reason why so many children could meet up with somebody they met online.
The majority of those who decided to meet these online acquaintances in real life said they were happy to have done so.
Among risks related to privacy, 11 per cent experience people pretending to be them and seven per cent said that somebody had created fake pages or images and circulated them to damage their reputation. These privacy risks are more common among adolescents.
The belief that teachers care about children they teach is well above the average (74 per cent). Despite a climate of trust in classrooms, mediation by teachers is low and remains restrictive rather than enabling.
The study shows that 43 per cent of participants said they had received rules about what they were allowed to do on the internet at school while 45 per cent said they had received advice on how to use the internet safely.