Symantec released some research today. Whenever you release something like that , you pray for a slow news day so that you might get decent media coverage. The All Whites drew at the World Cup – so nobody cares about anything else.  The research was released worldwide, and we know they’re already trying to forget the World Cup in Australia - so it might have got more coverage over there.

So what are the highlights of the research? Well, firstly – the research covers and compares 14 countries, so we can say New Zealand is more this and less that than the other countries. Mostly the differences aren’t that significant. Exposure to risk and negative experiences are fairly constant across the sampled countries. This is no real surprise. Its the same Internet they’re connecting to.  On the positive side, our children reported high levels of Internet use at school and for schoolwork – so our education system seems to have embraced the opportunity of the web slightly faster than the other countries in the research.

The research asked parents and children comparitive questions, and you’ll not be surprised to see a mismatch on many things. Parents underestimate the amount of time children are online, the number of places they connect from, and the number of negative experiences they have.

The parents report high levels of monitoring, rule setting and intervention. This isn’t reflected in the statistics collected from the children. A lot of parents are trying to have a conversation about safety with their children. (Perhaps they’re motivated by the horror stories that make the mainstream media.) The impact of those conversations seems to be limited.

Parents with limited understanding of their children’s online environments deliver fairly simple safety rules to their children. “Never share your personal details. Never friend people you don’t know. Don’t click on messages from people you don’t know.” The sorts of things that seem logical until you actually live in the space.

For a long time I’ve wanted to beleive that parents didn’t need to understand much about the online environment to keep their children safe within it. I hoped their parenting common sense could be successfully applied to online challenges. The environment might be different but the challenges are the same. Recently I’ve come to beleive that is not true. You might be explain how to drive a car even if you can’t drive yourself – but you could never teach somebody defensive driving without authentic driving experience. So too it is in cyberspace.

There’s no avoiding it. Parents are going to have to get some authentic knowledge of cyberspace if they’re going to help their children navigate the challenges.