Internet Use Posting Personal Information

Internet Use

Posting Personal Information on the Internet: Frequency Data

Among 11- to 14-year-olds (a Research Proposal)

Background survey made by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1996 revealed that children provide their personal information online when seeking to correspond with fictitious characters, registering in a drawing contest, obtaining access to a chat room/certain site, or registering to play a game (Hertzel, 2000). In recent years, posting such information has even become more commonplace with the advent of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, etc. And chat rooms/message boards where children and youth of similar interests can meet and interact online.

While posting personal information this way, voluntarily or unwittingly, appear seemingly harmless to a child, in actual fact there are potential risks involved. One, the information is likely to be stored and sold to anyone to make a profit (e.g. marketers targeting children as consumers); two, the child or parent becomes bombarded by advertisers to whom that information was disclosed; and three, when given in chat rooms, it makes him or herself available to be addressed by anyone online (Hertzel, 2000). The latter is especially alarming because it makes unsuspecting children exposed to predators like pedophiles and sexual offenders.

While laws such as the COPPA (Child Online Privacy Protection Act) and other industry initiatives like the have been put in place to protect children's privacy online, they are not without shortcomings (Lewandowski, 2002). The bottom line still really is supervision and proper guidance by parents and guardians. Children simply lack the cognitive ability to understand the privacy disclosure policy of websites, if they are aware of them at all, and neither do they understand the intended use of the information they share (Hertzel, 2000).

Besides installing filters and supervising sites frequented by children, effective monitoring should include knowing how often they actually post their personal information online. Obviously, the more frequent they divulge this information, the more likely they are to be exposed to the risks already described above. One alarming study has shown that a significant number of adolescent girls in the United States and New Zealand post personal data and photos whenever they are online (Berson and Berson, 2005). This suggests that for many adolescents, time spent on the Internet is tantamount to nonchalant exposure of their personal information, without being aware of its potential dangers.

Research Problem

The main problem that this study seeks to answer is:

How often do children, particularly those between 11-14 yrs of age, disclose their personal information on the Internet?

The specific guiding research questions for this study will be:

How many times a week do they engage in an online activity that requires them to post their personal information?

Is the frequency of posting correlated to the frequency of Internet usage?

Is the frequency of posting correlated to the location and relative availability of Internet access?

Who posts personal information more frequently -- boys or girls?

Which age group tends to post information more frequently - the 11-12 or the 13- to 14-year-olds?

What types of websites do they normally post personal information on?