Lifespan Development

Do Australian children trust their parents more than peers when seeking support for online activities?

Lelia Green*and Danielle Brady School of Communications and Arts, Edith Cowan University, Mount Lawley, Australia This paper considers the relative importance of parents and peers in supporting Australian children’s use of the internet and whether those choices for support change with age and gender. The paper reports ndings fromAU Kids Online, a satellite study toEU Kids Online. Parents were found to be the primary support to Australian children using the internet, with peer support increasingly important as children get older. The potential of these two key socializing in uences to minimize harm and build resilience is considered in the light of other studies on Australian family internet use.

Introduction This paper reports ndings fromAU Kids Online, an Australian study, to examine critically the structured management of children’s online experiences taking into account two key in uences on children’s behaviour, their parents and their peers. This is not to imply that parents and peers are the only in uences on children’s online activities. Schools and teachers are important, as are policy makers, legislators, internet service providers and hardware and software industries. However, it is typically parents who make the technology available to their children, and who most in uence the conditions under which it is used. Even so, as children become older and move into their teenage years at secondary school, peers and peer pressure become critical motivators and potential key in uencers of their online behaviour. Further, as more children begin accessing the internet using mobile and out-of-home technologies, the issues of responsible self- regulation and the active seeking of support in the face of challenging experiences become more important if children are to develop into con dent, resilient, internet-using adults.

The following research questions are addressed in this paper: what is the relative contribution, and importance, to young people of their parents and peers in providing support for their internet use? Is there evidence that these two socializing in uences change in contribution or importance during the eight years in which a child ages from 9 to 16 (inclusive)? Are there differences between how children and parents report on their internet use experiences? Is there variability in the extent and type of mediation for different gendered and different aged children?

Trust is a critical element in a functioning society. According to Rotenberg (1995,713): The survival of a society depends on whether it can successfully foster trust among its members. This goal is attained, in part, through the socialisation of trust, in which parents instil in their children trust in parents as well as other members of society. However, trust is reciprocal, children needing to trust their parents have to feel trusted by them as well as. Explaining that many of their child interviewees resented parents monitoring their online activities, Livingstone and Bober (2004, 46) note that the children q2013 Taylor & Francis *Corresponding author. Email:[email protected] Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 2014 Vol. 28, No. 1, 112–122,http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2013.854866 saw such oversight: ‘as an invasion of their privacy, expecting more trust and respect as they get older [...] many children used metaphors such as having one’s pockets searched, having one’s personal space invaded or being stalked’. For parents and children, trust is a critical element in family life, particularly as a marker of parents’ respect for their children’s growing maturity.

As the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) report,Media and Communications in Australian Families(2007), notes ‘Trust plays an important part in how families negotiate the use of electronic media and communications’ (ACMA2007,13).

Talking speci cally about children’s online activities, the report comments that: Most parents trust their child’s judgement about the internet and, at least some of the time, leave it up to him/her to choose what is done on the internet (83%). This includes two-thirds who trust their child’s judgement most of the time (66%). (ACMA2007, 28) What is underlined in this examination of ‘trust’ is that parents’ trust of their children’s responsible internet use is part of their strategy for managing family use of digital technologies. Further, there is some evidence that the online activities the child is trusted with change over time re ecting, in particular, the age of the child.

The maturation of children between the ages of 9 and 16, from relative dependency in primary school to relative autonomy in the upper years of high school, forms a major element of adolescent and teen research, and of development psychology. Necessarily, only the briefest outline of relevant research can be offered here. It should be noted that a majority of the literature on parental in uence with respect to peers relates to challenging behaviours (e.g. Kobus2003; Kiesner and Kerr2004). Even so, it is clear that the in uence of peers serves a critical role in the natural and healthy maturation of the adolescent young person. This important in uence is strengthened by a two-way dynamic. First, young people seek close friendships with peers who share their values and interests (Wentzel, Barry, and Caldwell2004) and, second, close friends’ attitudes and behaviours shape the development of their peers (Ennett and Bauman1994).

Adolescents often seek the chance to do something together. Thus, while online activity in adult life is generally positioned as a solitary pursuit (given a single keyboard and monitor), this need not be the case with young people: ‘Several friends may gather in front of a screen in a bedroom’, note Livingstone and Bober (2004, 20), arguing that the location of the computer does not necessarily dictate the context of its use. This sociability of interaction is likely to increase as the internet is more frequently accessed through location-independent smart hand-held devices.

Methods This paper examines issues of trust arising between parents, children and peers primarily by an analysis of theAU Kids Onlinestudy. Although conducted independently in Australia, the methods modelled those of theEU Kids Onlineproject as closely as possible to facilitate comparisons. A strati ed, random sample of 400 9 – 16 year olds who use the internet, and one of their parents/carers, was interviewed between November 2010 and February 2011. Samples were strati ed by state and by metropolitan area/rest of state for the larger states, with probability of selection proportionate to population. The primary sampling units were drawn from all census collection districts in Australia. Addresses were selected randomly from each randomly selected sample point using a Random Walk procedure. At each address with a resident child aged 9 – 16, who met the criterion of internet usage and agreed to interview, one child was randomly selected from all eligibleContinuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies113 children in the household on the basis of whichever eligible child had the most recent birthday. Of the children interviewed in the 400 families, 195 were boys and 205 were girls, and 222 were aged 9 – 12 and 178 were aged 13 – 16. Results are presented as the percentage of all children who used the internet. Each table is annotated with the relevant question number(s) from the originalEU Kids Onlinesurvey (www.eukidsonline.net). The main methodological difference betweenAU Kids OnlineandEU Kids Onlinewas the smaller sample size. Consequently, in this paper, results are only discussed if they differ by 10 percentage points or more, to ensure that they fall outside the margin of error at the 0.05 probability level. TheAU Kids Onlinedata were also collected about six months after the European data.

Although predominantly concerning Australian children, this paper considers these children in the context of the 25,142 children, from 25 countries, who participated in the widerEU Kids Onlinestudy. TheAU Kids Onlinesurvey is contextualized with a 2003 – 2004 qualitative study of 26 families,The Internet in Australian Family Life(e.g.

Holloway, Green, and Quin2004), and a report intoMedia and Communications in Australian Families(ACMA2007). Many of the speci c features of online activity changed between 2003 and 2011, including factors such as whether the internet is accessed via a dial-up service, or via broadband; and whether a xed line device is used or a smartphone or other hand-held device. While the technology changes comparatively swiftly, the dynamics around parents and their children, and the move from dependence towards autonomy pre gured in the 9 – 16 age group and their reliance upon same-aged friends, is a constant of western family life over the past half century. It is these dynamics, in part, that are explored in the consideration of trust relationships between members of peer groups, and between parents and children. In drawing upon multiple sources, a multifaceted perspective is adopted which constructs the child as being a member of his/ her family of origin, as well as belonging to one or more peer circles and in uenced by a range of other stakeholders including extended family; teachers and the education system; software and hardware developers and retailers; internet service providers; policy and law makers; law enforcement of cers; the media, communications and entertainment industries; and others. It is accepted that engagement with the internet is an increasingly complex behaviour with location of online access potentially ubiquitous in the developed world, permitting sometimes unsupervised online engagement. A critical realist stance has been taken to negotiate these complexities of viewpoint and perspective. Critical realism accords importance to both ‘the real’ and ‘the constructed’, and conceptualizes human agency as complex, and at times unpredictable, providing a useful framework for both quantitative and qualitative research (Clark2008). In privileging ‘reality’, critical realism chooses to avoid simplifying explanations, preferring instead to acknowledge the complex.

Results and discussion Parent support In the general sphere of internet use, children may welcome parental involvement without necessarily experiencing it as parental support. Parents’ involvement might include active, general help such as talking, sitting together or carrying out online activities together (Livingstone and Helsper2008). They might help with a speci c task such as doing something or nding something, giving an explanation or judgement about whether a particular site is good or bad, making suggestions about appropriate behaviour online or providing advice on how to deal with troubling online experiences. Sometimes this kind of 114L. Green and D. Brady assistance is termed as ‘positive mediation’, alongside restrictive strategies such as parents setting rules about internet use. In theEU Kids Onlinesurvey, as replicated inAU Kids Online, children and parents were asked purposely neutral questions about these different areas of support for online use, beginning with: ‘Does your parent sometimes...[e.g. sit with you while you use the internet]?’. The aim was to build up a picture of how parents and children interacted while children used the internet.

More than 90% of Australian children who use the internet said their parents did one or more of the mediation activities asked about, and 67% reported that their parents talk to them about what they do online (Table 1). Younger children (9 – 12) were more likely to do shared activities with their parents and more likely to have their parents stay nearby while they were using the internet. According to the children who experienced it, having one or more of their parents talking with them while they used the internet was an involvement more likely to persist into their teens for boys than girls (Table 1).

The data suggest that maybe parents are a little more concerned about their younger daughters’ online activities and, also, the online behaviour of their older sons. The ACMA (2007, 131) study also found that parents were slightly more likely to give girls the freedom to choose what they viewed on the internet (73% girls, 60% boys), and that parents talk to their children about what they do on the internet, with 60% parents reporting discussions around what their child did on the internet at other people’s houses, at least some of the time (ACMA2007, 29). In this study, it appeared that trust in a child’s judgement increased with age, and was higher for girls (ACMA2007, 29). Activities that involved checking and restricting internet activity declined from 81% for parents of 8 – 15 year olds to 69% (16 year olds) and 51% (17 year olds).

While parents’ restriction of internet use declined as the child became older, the parents said they felt managing their child’s online activities became more dif cult. The framing of the ACMA question as: ‘Would you say your child’s use of the internet is very easy to manage, fairly easy, [etc]...’ implied that a child’s internet use is something to be managed. For 90% parents of younger children (8 – 12), this was felt to be very or fairly easy, but the proportion saying this declined to 75% for 13 – 17 year olds (ACMA2007, 105). It might be that the aspect of internet use of most ‘management’ concern to parents relates to the amount of time spent online by their child: Older teenagers spend almost ve times as much time online than the younger children in the study [...] More parents have rules about when young people can use television, games and the internet than have rules about the content of those activities. (ACMA2007, 7, 13) Table 1. Australian parents’ activemediationof their child’s internet use, according to child.

% of children who say that their parent does...9 – 12 years 13 – 16 years Boys Girls Boys Girls All Talk to you about what you do on the internet 68 70 69 59 67 Stay nearby when you use the internet 73 74 54 52 63 Encourage you to explore and learn things on the internet on your own49 48 42 36 44 Sit with you while you use the internet 46 41 43 31 40 Do shared activities together with you on the internet45 47 31 31 38 One or more of these 89 96 94 86 91 Note: QC327 (QC, Question for child respondent). Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies115 However, parents do see the bene ts of online engagement. Around one in three parents felt that the internet allowed their child to ‘keep in touch with friends and what people are talking about’ (ACMA2007, 99).

Individual parents have different approaches to challenges around their children’s internet use, depending upon a range of speci c situational factors and circumstances.

In the Australian Research Council-funded qualitative research project,The Internet in Australian Family Life(2002 – 2004), a single mother of a 17-year-old boy described his earlier access to internet pornography and her contention that this was a transitory phase unlikely to harm him: It doesn’t bother me at all. If he wants to do that then he can do it because he’ll get sick of it and I think initially it was ‘let’s see what we can do’. I remember once, he called me in and says ‘Mum, come and look at her boobs’ and I looked at it and I said ‘it’s disgusting’ or something and walked away and he laughed his head off. But I’ve never come in [lately] and found him looking at that stuff...It’s just not something that I’m...really worried about.

It’s up to him. (Holloway, Green, and Quin2004) The child’s account of his early exploration was consistent with his mother’s, and when asked speci cally whether he had visited adult sites on the internet he responded: Like porn and stuff? Not really. I probably did when I was a bit younger but it’s not really very exciting. (Holloway, Green, and Quin2004) Valentine, Holloway, and Bingham (2000, 160) talk about the propensity of some adolescent males to ‘negotiate their masculinity within the heterosexual economy of [their] peer group social relations’. The situation is a fraught one for many parents. As Evans and Butkus (1997, 68) note, ‘although parents still occupy the role of the initiated with regard to sexuality, if they are uninitiated technologically then they lose the power base from which to set the markers for progressive socialisation’. ACMA (2007, 14) found that: Speci c [internet] restrictions relating to adult or sexual content are more likely for those 13 and over, than for those under 13, and content-related arrangements of any sort about internet use are more often in place with 10 – 14 year olds than with younger or older children. Comparing the accounts obtained inAU Kids Onlinesurvey, from the matched questions to both parent and child, the answers from parents and children about parents’ active mediation strategies did not always agree.There was 25 – 33% disagreement, depending onthearea(Table 2). Parents were more likely to take an overly positive view of their in uence (Table 2, column 3), for example in claiming shared activities (22%), than their children (8%). It was signi cantly less likely that children would cite parental mediation activities when their parents did not claim touse that mediation strategy (Table 2, column 2).

Speci c involvement by parents has the potential to keep children safe on the internet, and this was acknowledged by their children. More than 90% parents did one or more of the things asked about to actively mediate their child’s safety (Table 3). The most common involvement was simply helping when something was dif cult to do or nd (75%), but explaining why some websites are good or bad (74%) was also a favoured strategy.

According to their children, less than half of Australian parents suggested how they should behave towards others online (44%), while 67% had helped them if something online bothered them, and 64% had discussed ways they could respond to things that might bother them online. Australian children apparently experience a similarly high level of parental involvement as the children inEU Kids Online, where an average of 86% claim their parents do one or more of the active mediation activities (Livingstone et al.2011,108). 116L. Green and D. Brady In the area of mediation with the aim of promoting internet safety, when children and parents’ answers were compared, the apparent overestimation by parents (Table 4) was much less marked than it was for their statements around shared involvement in internet use more generally (Table 2). Both parents and children largely acknowledge the role parents play in the area of safety.

Parents may choose to respond to the possible risks of online interaction in ways that demonstrate and build trust. TheInternet in Australian Family Lifeproject included a family with two teenage girls who had communicated with people online, who were not known to the girls face-to-face, and who had suggested that the girls might want to meet up with them. The mother explained her con dence in her daughters’ abilities to manage online communication:

I suppose you just get a bit concerned about the chat lines and who they’re talking to sometimes but really they usually tell me [...to 17-year old daughter in the room] ‘Like on the chat lines you, when, had that idiot [...] that one that was going to come over here’. Just some idiots on there. A lot of the kids are teenagers. I know Shani’s [14] gotten on there a few times on the chat line and there’s been obviously someone asking them lewd questions and she’s usually blocked them and cut them off. (Holloway, Green, and Quin2004) Table 2. Australian parents’ activemediationof their child’s internet use, according to an individual child and one of their parents/carers.

% of children who say that their parents sometimes...Child no parent noChild yes parent noChild no parent yesChild yes parent yes Talk to you about what you do on the internet4 5 29 62 Stay nearby when you use the internet 17 12 20 51 Encourage you to explore and learn things on the internet on your own25 9 31 35 Sit with you while you use the internet 37 11 23 29 Do shared activities together with you on the internet40 8 22 30 Note: QC327 and QP220 (QP, Question for parent respondent).

Table 3. Australian parents’ active mediation of their child’s internetsafety, according to the child.

% of children who say that their parent does...9 – 12 years 13 – 16 years Boys Girls Boys Girls All Helped you when something is dif cult to do or nd on the internet83 88 75 71 79 Explained why some websites are good or bad 72 78 80 67 74 Suggested ways to use the internet safely 76 78 72 76 75 Suggested ways to behave towards other people online60 75 69 64 44 Helped you in the past when something has bothered you on the internet41 51 35 48 67 Talked to you about what to do if something on the internet bothered you57 72 61 67 64 One or more of these 94 99 95 90 94 Note: QC329. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies117 Where an older child is able to appreciate that a communication option is risky, talks about this and changes behaviour accordingly, parents may feel particularly able to trust them.

Parents have a complex and challenging job in attempting to mediate their children’s online activities in ways which recognize the changing autonomy of the child as they move from dependence into young adulthood. At least two-thirds of Australian parents choose to talk with their children about their internet activities (Table 1), and or help when something has bothered their child online (Table 3). Around three-quarters have suggested ways in which to use the internet safely, explained why some websites are good or bad or helped when something online was dif cult to do or nd (Table 3). These are strategies that build trust and resilience, keeping channels of communication open and increasing the likelihood that the child will continue to talk to the parent about their online activities. Such exchanges offer the child a social context in which to place their internet experiences, even when such activities occur well away from their parents’ oversight and remote from home, for example through the use of a hand-held device or at a friend’s house. Education and informed decision- making are key components of the fostering of children’s responsible decision-making around internet activities. They are also implicated in, and the fruits of, relationships of trust.

Peer support Peers are an important source of support for children and young people. InAU Kids Online survey, 82% of children said their friends had helped or supported them in using the internet (Table 5). Again, the question to children was not framed in terms of help or support, only whether their friends had ‘ever done any of these things’ (from a speci ed list). Of the forms of help considered, peers were most likely to assist other children to do something or nd something on the internet (75%). While this response to their friend’s activity is similar to the number of parents providing the same kind of support, it is coupled with comparatively lower levels of advice-giving. It seems that peers are more likely to provide a practical and value-free form of support.

Interestingly, while there are slight differences between the genders in terms of parental mediation, there are suggestions of similar slight differences with peer mediation but in the opposite direction (Table 5). Australian girls are much more likely than Australian boys to say that they receive support from their friends when something online Table 4. Australian parents’ active mediation of their child’s internetsafety, according to the child and one of their parents/carers.

% of children who say that their parents sometimes...Child no parent noChild yes parent noChild no parent yesChild yes parent yes Helped you when something is dif cult to do or nd on the internet912 11 67 Explained why some websites are good or bad7 7 19 67 Suggested ways to use the internet safely 8 14 16 61 Suggested ways to behave towards other people online15 13 18 54 Helped you in the past when something has bothered you on the internet39 16 16 29 Talked to you about what to do if something on the internet bothered you16 13 19 52 Note: QC329 and QP222.

118L. Green and D. Brady has bothered them. This is particularly true of older children with 56% of the girls in the 13 – 16 year old age range, but only 29% of the boys reporting such support (Table 5). This gendered difference was not apparent in the pooledEU Kids Onlinedata (Livingstone et al.2011, 123). In that case, the boys in the European study report similar results to their Australian counterparts with 28% saying they have received help from their friends. Girls in theEU Kids Onlinecohort are much more like their male peers than they are like Australian girls: 33% ofEU Kids Onlinegirls aged 13 – 16 years say they have received help from their friends when something has bothered them online compared to 56% of AU Kids Onlinegirls aged 13 – 16.

Acrossthe AU Kids Onlineage groups, there was no difference between girls and boys in terms of receiving one or more forms of peer support. However, peer support tends to increase with age. This is in line with the role of peers as social supports during the time in which young adults progressively disengage from their families of origin. Allison and Sabatelli (1988, 5) note that ‘Parental encouragement of autonomy and individuality relieves adolescents of implicit emotional demands to sacri ce their individuality’. The movement from parents as primary support, to shared support between parents and peers, can be an ‘and also’ dynamic, rather than ‘either or’. According to Allison and Sabatelli (1988, 5), families that ‘promote a comfortable interdependence among generations [through encouraging autonomy provide] opportunities for emotional support without guilt or anxiety’. Many children receive support from both their parents and their peers.

Overall, 82% of Australian children in the study reported that their peers had supported or helped them in one or more of the ways asked about (Table 5). This was higher than theEU Kids Onlineaverage of 73% and put Australia in the top-seven countries for peer support (Livingstone et al.2011, 124).

Parent versus peer support Comparing the giving of safety advice by parents or peers in theAU Kids Onlinestudy, parents are clearly the rst source of information for children seeking internet-related support across both genders and all age groups (Table 6). Peers become slightly more important, and parents slightly less so, only in the oldest age group. Generally, peers (33%) were less likely than parents (44%) to provide advice on appropriate behaviour online.

Parents (74%) were more likely to make judgements about the relative merits of websites Table 5. Australian peer mediation of child’s internet use, according to the child.

% of children who say friends at their school have ever...9 – 12 years 13 – 16 years Boys Girls Boys Girls All Helped you when something is dif cult to do or nd on the internet69 72 80 79 75 Explained why some websites are good or bad40 32 40 47 39 Helped you in the past when something has bothered you on the internet25 37 29 56 37 Suggested ways to behave towards other people online26 27 38 43 33 Suggested ways to use the internet safely 29 29 34 36 32 One or more of all of the above 80 76 83 88 82 Note: QC336. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies119 than peers (39%). Australian children are more likely to say they provided safety guidance to their peers (52%) than that they received it (32%) (Table 6). Whereas the average situation in the 25 European countries was that 35% of children said they provided safety advice to their friends, while 44% said they received it, there was considerable variability between countries in the relative giving and receiving of advice (Livingstone et al.2011, 125 [Figure 98]). In both Europe and Australia, help given and received appears to increase with age. One exception in Australia is the dip in help given at age 13 – 14, perhaps re ecting the move from primary school to high school and the need to re-establish friendships in a new social circle.

While information is shared between peers, the domain of safety advice appears to be centred on the parents. When children are bothered by something on the internet, it seems they are more likely to seek and receive help from their parents (67%,Table 3) than their peers (37%,Table 5). Mediation by peers in the variety of activities carried out on the internet was higher (82%,Table 5) than mediation speci cally in the realm of safety advice (32%,Table 6).

The ACMA (2007, 73) study, with a sample of 1003 child respondents, aged 8 – 17, measured children’s internet use via a personal diary system. For 72% of their internet time the children were alone, while 28% of online time was spent in the company of others, most often with other young people. At that time, children also reported using the internet primarily at home (76% of their internet time), a situation that is rapidly changing due to the uptake of smartphones and hand-held devices with internet access. The ACMA study reported messaging and chatting as the most popular activities during 2007, in terms of children’s use of their internet time (ACMA2007, 61). Taken together, this data show that children seek the company of their peers and opportunities to communicate with them.

European research demonstrates that this is a cross-cultural characteristic: ‘Children mainly care about keeping in touch’ (Kohnstamm2010, 8).

Compared to children surveyed in the widerEU Kids Onlinestudy, 82% of Australian children reporting peer-mediated support (Table 5) is in line with the European average of 73% (Livingstone et al.2011, 124 [Figure 96]). Overall, Australian peer support is at a higher level than in most other European countries, and the Australian average of children offering safety advice to peers (52%) is higher than in any other country. This nding across countries re ects the importance of the peer group in early adolescence and the transition from parental in uence to adulthood (Simons-Morton and Hartos2002; Simons-Morton and Chen2009).

Parents and peers are both important when it comes to issues of resilience, and resilience is a personal attribute which operates in a range of circumstances of special relevance to adolescents. A person’s resilience is situation- and circumstance-speci c, Table 6. Summary of Australian peer and parent mediation of the child’s safe internet use, according to the child.

Child suggested ways to friendsFriends suggested ways to childParent suggested ways to child Girls 55 33 77 Boys 48 31 74 9 – 10 years 51 26 76 11 – 12 years 55 31 78 13 – 14 years 44 31 79 15 – 16 years 56 38 70 All children 52 32 75 Note: QC329c, QC337 and QC336c.

120L. Green and D. Brady however. Rutter (1987, 345) argues that ‘Resilience cannot be seen as a xed attribute of the individual. If circumstances change, the risk [to be countered by resilience] alters’.

Summarizing Rutter’s perspective, Brackenreed (2010, 115) argues that there are four protective processes supporting the development of resilience in an individual: ‘Firstly are those that reduce a person’s exposure to risk, secondly, those that reduce negative reactions to bad experiences, thirdly, those that promote self-esteem through achievement and nally, positive relationships that provide opportunities through life’. In terms of young people developing resilience in the face of troubling online content, parental interventions might be most associated with the rst of these aspects of resilience while positive peer relationships are likely to join parental in uence in impacting upon the nal three. Relationships of trust are important here, as between children and their parents.

Conclusion Considering the research questions: in terms of relative support by parents and peers, parents are clearly the primary source of support for Australian male and female children over the age range examined. Parental support is particularly important when children have experienced something on the internet that bothers them. The agreement between parents and children on the amount and kind of support offered is quite close, even though both were asked separately in the study. Peer support, while generally lower than parental support in a relative sense, is still necessary and apparently of greater importance in Australia than in Europe. Why this is so remains to be discovered by further analysis of the AU Kids Onlinedata. Excepting some speci c activities, peer support appears to be similar between Australian boys and girls. Like their European counterparts, peer support becomes more important for Australian children as they grow older.

Strong, positive, relationships with parents and peers, coupled with strategies to cope with any unsettling experiences (such as talking about these, and taking action such as blocking and reporting inappropriate content), offer the possibility of building future resilience. Parents and peers have a critical role to play in promoting the development of competent, con dent, internet-using young people, and the trust that characterizes these relationships is an important part of their effectiveness. Trusting parents, and trusting peers, combined with continued public education and support, may yet prove to be the best strategy for developing positive skills and experiences online.

Acknowledgements This paper andAU Kids Onlinesurvey draw on the work of theEU Kids Onlinenetwork funded by the EC (DG Information Society) Safer Internet Plus Programme [project code SIP-KEP-321803]; seewww.eukidsonline.net. The authors are grateful to theEU Kids Onlinenetwork for their support.

Funding The Internet in Australian Family Lifewas an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP0211751) funded from 2002 to 2004, with Lelia Green and Robyn Quin as chief investigators and Donell Holloway and Jack Seddon as research associates. The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation funded theAU KidsOnline research through their risk and representation program.

Notes on contributors Lelia Green is Professor of Communications at Edith Cowan University and is a co-Chief Investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative lndustries and lnnovation, funders of the AU Kids Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies121 Online research. She is on the International Advisory Panel of the EU Kids Online project, and a member of the 30 country network which is led by Professor Sonia Livingstone. Lelia’s research has included a speci c focus upon the internet in Australian family life since the early 2000s.

Danielle Brady is a Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture and Mass Communications and Co-ordinator of Higher Degrees by Research in the School of Communications and Arts at Edith Cowan University. Danielle is an associate researcher on the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative lndustries and lnnovation funded AU Kids Online project and a chief investigator on an ARC Linkage project investigating community use of satellite derived bush re information.

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