Do you know what your kid did last night on Internet?

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New York, Feb 6 : Instant messaging and blogs are some of the limitless ways your child communicates online with the offline world. But, if a study is to be believed, it is only widening the divide between you and your kid.

A team of researchers at the Tel Aviv University in Israel has found that there is an enormous gap between what parents thinks their children are doing online and what is happening actually.

“The study tells us that parents don’t know what their kids are doing. They are unaware of what their children are doing on the Internet, in the same manner that they don’t know what goes on at class, parties, or clubs,” according to lead researcher Dafna Lemish.

In fact, the researchers came to the conclusion after surveying parents and their offspring about the children’s activities on the Internet.

In one part of the study, the researchers surveyed over 500 Jewish and Arab children from different age groups and socio-economic backgrounds, asking them if they gave out personal information online. An overwhelming 73% said that they did. The parents of the same children believed that

only 4% of their children did so.

The same children were also asked if they had been exposed to pornography while surfing, or if they had made face-to-face contact with strangers that they had met online.

About 36% from the high school group admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online. Nearly 40%

of these children admitted to speaking with strangers

regularly.

However, fewer than 9% of the parents knew that their children had been meeting with strangers, engaging in what is viewed as very risky

behaviour.

In another part of the study, the researchers found that 30% of children between the ages of 9 and 18 delete the search history from their browsers in an attempt to protect their privacy from their parents.

According to Lemish, the common filtering software may not be effective, since children will access what they are looking for elsewhere—at a friend’s house, a cyber cafe, or school. “And if the child accesses dangerous material outside the home, they will be unprepared and uninformed when it happens,” she was quoted by the ScienceDaily as saying.