MORE than half of children have used an online social network by the age of 10, according to a study.
Facebook tops the list of sites that children sign up to under-age, with 52% of eight to 16-year-olds admitting they had ignored the official age limit, the Social Age report for online safety advisory website Knowthenet found.
Other popular sites include WhatsApp, used by 40% of eight to 16-year-olds, BBM (24%), SnapChat (11%) and Ask.fm (8%).
The study found that although 59% of children are social networking by 10 years old, just 32% of parents feel "very confident" about helping them stay safe online.
The poll found 21% of children had posted negative comments, starting from an average age of 11.
Dr Richard Woolfson, child psychologist and Knowthenet spokesman, said: "Parents can no longer protect children by simply trying to limit their online experiences. Instead parents need encourage children to share both good and bad online experiences, talk openly about the risks they may encounter online without scaring them and make sure they keep up with the latest social media crazes."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article