If your 12-year-old is already on social media, and you get nightmares about her online safety, your fears are not unfounded.

According to the “Teens, Tweens and Technology Survey” released by Intel Security on Tuesday, 44 per cent of the children active online will meet, or have already met, strangers via the Internet.

Trust and threat

The survey reveals more worrying trends.

Most children (64 per cent) will hide (some of) their online activity from parents, which means that even parents who do keep a watchful eye are often deceived by what they see.

Also, while 86 per cent of the parents claim to know the kind of activities that their child regularly participates in, more than half of the children (56 per cent) claim that they change their online behaviour when they know their parents are watching.

Anonymous names

An alarming 43 per cent children use anonymous names or aliases for their social media profiles. Around 43 per cent of the children active on social media claim to have witnessed cruel behaviour on social networks, while an astonishing 52 per cent said that they have bullied people over social media.

The online survey was conducted among 8,026 children and teens aged from eight to 16, and 9,017 parents worldwide.

In India, it covered 2,370 participants (1,185 parents and 1,185 teens and tweens) in the same age band.

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