Good Research Proposal About Are Parents Clueless About Child Predators On The Internet?

In the modern age of technology, internet surfing has become a daily routine rather than an occasional practice it used to be, and this has opened the doors for many issues. According to a survey by Centre for Missing and Exploited children, 93% of the children in America between the ages of 12 and 17 are internet users. And when on the internet, the children are exposed to content that could be too overwhelming for their innocence including porn, racist content, and predators. So, I believe there is no argument about whether or not the children might be exposed to the content that surpasses their experience, but the question is that are parent clueless about this content and the risks that they may be entailing?
There was a confidential survey taken by 454 parents that investigated the risks of internet surfing and how much the parents knew about these risks. According to this survey, 11 percent of the parents were of the view that their child had suffered through cyber-bullying while 30 percent of the children admitted that they had. Furthermore, 15 percent of the children in the study confessed to bullying others, and less than 5 percent of the parents were aware of that. 20 percent of the children in the survey complained that they had been approached by strangers online, but only 10 percent of the parents had knowledge of that.
When taking care of this serious situation, the first step would be to bring the parents to the realization the amount of risk their children may be facing from strangers and predators. And the next would be for the parents to take precautions against these risks. An online security expert Benjamin Halpert explains how parents could protect their children from the dark side of the internet. “The biggest thing is to start early. Children are going online at a younger and younger age these days. The younger you can start the better, talking to your children about it, so that it becomes ingrained as they go forward,” Halpert says. According to him, computers should be kept in a place where there are many watchful eyes. There should also be rules that the child should follow when on the internet and the parental controls could further control the contents that kids can access.

Works Cited

Mihelich, Peggy. Protect your children from online predators. 23 March 2007. <http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/03/23/safeonline.101/index.html?_s=PM:TECH>.
Segelken, H. Roger. Parents could be clueless about risky online behavior. 30 October 2013. <http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2013/10/parents-could-be-clueless-about-risky-online-behavior>.
Stephanie. Are Parents Clueless about Child Predators? <http://stephaniemertus.weebly.com/essay-5.html>.