Use of Web sites by Canadian youth, aged 9-17

• 50 per cent of kids say that surfing the Web is their favourite online activity.
  
  
• 70 per cent of Canadian parents claim to know "a great deal" or "a fair bit" about the Web sites their kids visit.
  
  
• But only 45 per cent of the kids agree that their parents know what they do online.
  
  
• More than a third of Web-surfing young people (36 per cent) "always" or "sometimes" erase the history file that shows what Web sites they've visited.

Access to inappropriate material

• 51 per cent of parents say their biggest concern with their child being on the Internet is access to inappropriate material.
  
  
• More than 50 per cent of kids say they've accidentally ended up on a porn site when surfing.
  
  
• But a quarter of kids have deliberately visited a porn site, and almost a third of male high school students say they visit porn sites "a lot."
  
  
• Most kids who use the Internet say that their parents never sit with them while they surf (68 per cent), never use filters to block inappropriate sites (65 per cent), or never check on which sites they've visited (54 per cent).

Personal information and privacy

• More than half the kids in secondary school say they never bother to look at the privacy policies of the Web sites they visit.
  
  
• 60 per cent of young Internet users have household rules about not giving out personal information about themselves or their family.
  
  
• Despite this, 21 per cent of young Internet users indicated that they would give their name and address to an online contest in order to win a prize.

Personal Web sites

• Nearly a quarter of Canadian kids (22 per cent) have their own personal Web site.
  
  
• Of these, 26 per cent give their full name, 22 per cent show a photograph of themselves, and 57 per cent list their email address.
  
  
• As well, 12 per cent of kids' Web sites contain rude or insulting remarks about people.
  
  
• 46 per cent of kids with sites haven't shown them to a parent or teacher.

Young Canadians in a Wired World: The Students' View 2001 is a nationwide investigation of Internet use among Canadian youth that explores what kids do online, how they perceive the Internet, and what they know about it.

Canada's Children in a Wired World: The Parents' View 2000 is a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 Canadian parents, who were asked about their perceptions of the Internet and their awareness of the benefits and risks it offers their children. Selected findings from the parent survey are compared to data from the student survey.