MOSCOW, December 7. /TASS/. Most Russian parents feel that the Internet is dangerous for children in general, whereas teenagers themselves often do not agree with the fact that virtual content may harm them, according to a survey carried out by the NAFI research center, available to TASS.
"Most parents (72%) believe that the internet is a dangerous environment for children. Two-thirds of teenagers (67%) understand that there is unsafe content on the Internet, but one in three say that information on the Internet cannot inflict any real harm to users," the researchers say.
In particular, 76% of the polled teenagers prefer using various sources of information to draw an objective picture of a situation, whereas 24% of the surveyed youngsters do not doubt the reliability of the news sources that they have grown to trust.
Parents, for their part, do not deny the fact that the information on the Internet may be useful for their children. "More than half of adults (55%) believe that there is plenty of useful material on the Internet for children. That said, the absolute majority of teenagers polled (90%) noted the benefit of modern gadgets and apps in everyday life," the report says.
In addition, 45% of parents believe that their children use computers for games, whereas just 20% of teenagers said that they use digital devices for entertainment.
The NAFI research center and the QIWI group conducted survey dubbed: "Children and Technologies" in May-August 2018. The polling of parents (with children under 17 at the time the poll was conducted) and online polling of teenagers aged 14-17 were carried out in 150 communities in 46 Russian regions. The total volume of the sampled population contained 800 parents (with a 3.4% margin of error) and 412 teenagers (with a 4.8% margin of error).