Internet Safety Moves into "Top Ten" Concerns of Parents with Kids

Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 5/8/2007 6:59:00 AM

What do parents worry about when it comes to their kids? Smoking and drug abuse top the list, at 40 percent and 39 percent, respectively, according to a new, national poll. But Internet safety is now in the top ten.

The National Poll on Children’s Health, conducted in March by C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan and Knowledge Networks, Inc., surveyed 2,076 adults. Internet safety came in as number seven—out of a possible 17 measures—with 26 percent of parents choosing Internet safety as their top child-rearing problem.

Interestingly, women were more likely to call Internet safety a big problem—32 percent of them rated it as a major area of concern, versus 21 percent of men.

With those numbers Internet safety ended up sandwiched between teen pregnancy, at 28 percent, and school violence, at 24 percent. However, the poll was conducted before the Virginia Tech shootings.

Childhood obesity was also in the top three. Other concerns identified by parents as a "big problem" included sexually transmitted infections, abuse and neglect, and driving accidents. In terms of Web safety, respondents of all income and education levels expressed similar levels of concern, according to the researchers.

But respondents did diverge by other measures. "We found that major race/ethnicity groups differ when it comes to the top three health concerns for children," Dr. Matthew Davis, director of the poll and an associate professor of general pediatrics and internal medicine at U-M Medical School, said. "While white adults list smoking, drug abuse and alcohol abuse as their top three concerns, black adults rate teen pregnancy, smoking and drug abuse; and Hispanic adults rank smoking, drug abuse, and childhood obesity as the three major health problems for children."

Commenting on the implications of the poll, Davis said: "It suggests that the government may want to target more investment toward issues such as teen smoking, drug abuse, and childhood obesity, in a way that reflects the fact that the public is currently prioritizing these problems as even bigger than other issues on the list."