Rather than complaining and banning children from using the Internet, parents and teachers should become more Web-literate so that they can understand and share in what children are doing on the Internet, speakers told a press conference yesterday.
“Teachers and parents may panic if kids spend a lot of time online and they don’t understand what is going on,” National Chengchi University Department of Radio and Television professor Wu Tsuei-jen (吳翠珍) told a press conference, where the results of research into children’s use of cellphones, the Internet and television were released.
“Instead of trying to prohibit everything, they should try to become more ‘cyber-literate,’” Wu said.
The study showed that more than 95 percent of elementary-school children live in homes with at least one computer. Among them, 84.4 percent have Internet access at home.
Elementary-school-age children spend an average of 28.3 percent of their online time playing games, 20 percent of the time downloading music and videos and 17.2 percent of the time chatting with friends.
TEACHER KNOWS BEST
Flourishing Internet activities have changed many things, especially the way information is handled, and this poses a challenge to teachers and parents, the experts said.
“In the past, whatever the teacher said was true, but now kids may reject what a teacher says because they see something different online,” said Yang Yi-feng (楊益風), chairman of the Taipei Teachers’ Association. “We teachers think we’re trying to teach the mainstream view to kids, but what if 100 of a child’s Internet friends say the opposite of what their teacher says?”
Taipei Parents’ Association member Chang Yu-huei (常玉慧) said it was of some concern that most parents do not know what their kids are doing online.
Chang said she used to be like that, and felt that there was a gap between her and her son.
“But now I’ve registered on Facebook [the online social networking site], and I found that it’s much easier to talk with my son, because now I know his language,” Chang said.
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