Posted: 20th Apr, 2011 By: MarkJ


The latest
2011 Media Literacy Report from communications regulator Ofcom has discovered that 48% of parents with children aged 5-15 who use the internet at home think they
know less about the internet than their children do.
Parents are also now
less likely to use parental control software or related tools from their broadband ISP. Just 37% had such a service protecting their kids' connection in 2010, which is down from 43% in 2009. Most claim that this is either because they trust their child or have begun directly supervising them.
Home internet use stands at 67% for 5-7 year olds, 82% for 8-11s and 90% for 12-15s. Meanwhile the amount of time that
adult internet users say they spend on online has increased from 12.2 hours in 2009 to
14.2 hours in 2010.
Some 82% of adult internet users claim to have saved money by going online in the past six months. Adult internet users also listen to and watch far more audio-visual content online than before (41% in 2010 vs 32% in 2009). The full reports can be found below.
Meanwhile, a related EC study has found that 43% of 9 to 12-year-old internet users in the UK have a profile on a social networking site. This rises to 88% for those aged between 13 - 16. Thankfully just 10% set their profile to public, which exposes a lot of your personal details.
UK Adults' Media Literacy Report
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/media-literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/adultmedialitreport11/
UK Children's Media Literacy Report
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/media-literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/ukchildrensml11/