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PARENT-CHILD CYBER CONVERSATIONS ON THE RISE AS TEENS AND TWEENS GET REAL TO WORLDWIDE DIGITAL THREATS

Announcement posted by McAfee 21 Jul 2015

46% of Australian youth are interested in developing cyber skills to tackle cybercrime and online attacks according to Intel Security report

Sydney, Australia – July 21, 2015 – Incidences of cyberbullying are down and parent-child online transparency is up* according to the latest findings from Intel Security's Teens, Tweens and Technology Study 2015. In addition, the study found that 46% of Australia’s youth is interested in learning to program or write code, with 59% hoping to use their cyber skills for protecting individuals’ privacy from being stolen by cybercriminals and 40% for protecting people’s safety from attacks from terrorists.

This year, 53% of teens and tweens said that they had witnessed cyberbullying (81% in 2014), with 16% saying that they had experienced it personally (39% in 2014). 87% of children said that they had discussed cyber issues with parents, showing a rise from the previous year’s 76%.

The annual research presents a gauge on the behaviour and opinions of young Australians on online activity and was this year extended to include parental options and insight into future digital higher education and employment aspirations.

Parental trust was also up according to the data, with fewer parents (75%) now looking to monitor their child's devices (91% in 2014) and more than two thirds (66%) 'friends' with their children online. This positive change showcases the impact of ongoing, open conversations and reinforces the need for parent-child conversations in order to help children remain vigilant about maintaining safe digital lives. Nearly half of parents, however, admitted showing more concern for their child’s online activity due to them using a mobile device (46%), being most interested in how much personal information their child is sharing (24%) and whether their child is unknowingly in contact with predators (23%).

Australian youth upwardly social but continuing to take risks

In 2015 across Australia, two in five tweens (aged 8-12) and teens (aged 13-17) spend more than two hours per day in front of a mobile device, with Facebook replacing YouTube as the most popular social media network for the audience.

Despite the minimum age for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter being 13 years old, the research revealed that 36% of boys and 64% of girls aged 8-12 are active on the social media platforms, rising to 72% of boys and 81% of girls aged 13-16.

Giving cause for concern, the results showed a rise in the number of teens and tweens creating fake social media account profiles in 2015, with two in five (38%) now admitting to hiding online activity from friends, classmates, parents and teachers through the method (13% in 2014).

Despite the increase in trust, the research confirmed the need for parents to remain cautious given that one in three children still actively hide online activity from their parents (37%) and one in five would meet a stranger they had first met online (11%).

Cybercrime - the new cyber education challenges for Australia's youth audience

Replacing cyberbullying this year, disclosure of personal information is now the biggest online fear for both parents (67%) and children (62%), with bullying a secondary fear for both audiences (52% and 46% respectively). Interestingly, teens and tweens also identified being more worried about being hacked (34%) than interacting with strangers (28%) - versus nearly half of parents (47%) showing concern for stranger contact.

A further 77% of teens and tweens said that in 2015 they are either ‘somewhat’ or ‘very concerned’ about cybercriminals targeting them online.

Melanie Duca, APAC Consumer Marketing Director, Intel Security says, “This year’s data presents some fascinating and telling statements. Since we began our cyber education partnership with Life Education in 2013, our program has reached more than 235,000 students, so we’re very pleased to see that the parent-child cyber conversation is at the highest level we’ve seen. Australian kids are clearly savvier than ever before about both their own digital safety and that of the wider online environment – and that is a great achievement.

“It’s encouraging to see that issues like cyberbullying seem to have lessened to some degree, but there’s a lot more that we can do especially with the youth of today being more social than ever before,” adds Melanie.

The digital future for tweens and teens

With the shift in concern displaying more awareness of wider global digital threats, there is increased interest across the youth audience for developing the skills to tackle the problems.

46% of teens and tweens said they are interested in learning more about code development for app and website building, whilst a further 43% said they would look to this industry for a future career – a sentiment echoed by parents, with a third saying they were hopeful that learning would help their child's future employment.

In addition to protecting individuals’ online privacy and safety, Australian teens and tweens also identified a desire to protect companies from cybercriminals (37%) and protecting the country from outside attack (35%) as further motivations for the interest in cyber skills learning.

Parenting expert Dr. Justin Coulson, adds, “The shift we’re seeing is an encouraging one which confirms that our teens and tweens are increasingly aware of the risks and rewards of online participation. Due to their digitally-connected nature, often youth will be aware of worldwide issues before parents – so I’m not surprised that this has been reflected in the data.

“As teens and tweens’ online usage and participation increases, it’s great to see an increasing desire to take cyber skills further in education and employment. It’s now important that we as parents learn with our children as we progress into an increasingly-connected digital world,” continued Justin.

Melanie adds, “This data represents the new challenge for our cyber education program and we have a great opportunity to use this data in our work with Life Education. With Alastair MacGibbon in office as e-Safety Commissioner, we’re looking forward to continuing our work with Life Education, the Government and industry to continue the ongoing efforts in keeping youth safe online.”

For further information, please see attached Data Sheet and visit: http://intelsecurityapac.com/digitalsafety/ 

- ENDS -

*2014 – 2015 comparisons have been drawn against statistics from two separate studies, each showing a national representative sample of youth responses.

Additional Content


Intel Security’s Cybermum, Alex Merton McCann, added


Top 5 Cyber Parenting Tips to Help Facilitate Online Safety:

  1. Connect With Your Kids: Talk casually and frequently with them about the online risks, and make sure the communication lines are open. Foster discussions around relevant
    news stories or cases at schools

  2. Set Password Rules: To show camaraderie and trust, teens may share their social media passwords with friends or acquaintances. Friend or not, this is a dangerous practice, so ensure that your kids understand the importance of personal security

  3. Read App Reviews: Read the reviews for the apps your child is interested in, especially for any comments surrounding security. Personal recommendation is also great here, but another tips is to also encourage your kids to read the app’s review before they hit download

  4. Establish Rules Together: When everyone is calm, work out a set of online rules. You could even consider a formal Internet agreement or contract. Make sure you include time allowed online as well as what information can and can’t be shared online

  5. Up Your Tech Knowledge: Stay one step ahead and take the time to research the various devices your kids use – but also stay knowledgeable about the newest and latest social networks too. I would recommend creating accounts for the social networks that your kids are using, so that you fully understand what they’re interacting with

About the research

MSI International conducted 1,000 Australian interviews across 500 male and female parents of children aged 8-16 and 500 children aged 8-16. The online interviews were conducted from April 28-May 12, 2015.

About Intel Security

McAfee is now part of Intel Security. With its Security Connected strategy, innovative approach to hardware-enhanced security, and unique McAfee Global Threat Intelligence, Intel Security is intensively focused on developing proactive, proven security solutions and services that protect systems, networks, and mobile devices for business and personal use around the world. Intel Security is combining the experience and expertise of McAfee with the innovation and proven performance of Intel to make security an essential ingredient in every architecture and on every computing platform. The mission of Intel Security is to give everyone the confidence to live and work safely and securely in the digital world. www.intelsecurity.com.

Intel, the Intel logo, McAfee and the McAfee logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

© 2015 Intel Corporation

About Life Education Australia

Life Education, as the largest non-government provider of health education to children and young people in Australia, has been a valued partner of Australian schools for over 35 years. It has 100 plus mobile learning centres and qualified educators across the country and reaches 640,000 children nationally. A registered charity, independent of both government and religion, Life Education aims to empower children and young people to make safer and healthier choices through education. It continues to do so by expanding its national health and wellbeing program in Australia to include cyber safety content with the support of Intel Security. The bCyberwise and It’s Your Call modules have reached 259,000 children since launching in 2013.

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