Oz kids increasingly dumping traditional media for Internet

Melbourne, Oct 15 : Australian kids are more internet-savvy than ever, all thanks to the daily usage among children under 10 tripling in the last four years, a survey has found.

Hitherto, kids aged between 7 and 14 still used to find time to tear themselves away from the computer to read newspapers with an impressive 27 per cent increase since last year while watching TV and movies and reading magazines remained steady.

Carried out in September, Cartoon Network's New Generation, which surveyed 1472 children, found since 2004 kids aged between 7 and 8 have tripled daily internet usage.

Other trends saw 22 per cent of kids have a blog and that 53 per cent use an instant messenger - 19 per cent daily.

Social networking sites like Bebo, MySpace and Facebook were visited regularly by 29 percent of those surveyed.

But just as more children are finding their way around the web, parental supervision of their child's online activities is alarmingly low.

According to the survey, only 28 per cent of parents check every site their child visits while 16 per cent check occasionally.

The fear of 'bad people contacting them on the internet' was also a concern for 67 per cent of kids in the survey.

NAPCAN national program manager Marie Fox says it can be difficult for parents to monitor their children online.

"A lot of parents try but you can't watch over their should every second they are on the computer," the Daily Telegraph quoted her, as saying.

"Technology is moving so fast that parents cannot keep up," she added.

ANI