Newsgate360- Riyadh: Saudi Arabian children have become more active on the internet as quarantine progresses. Comparing their activity in the first week of January and the last week of March, the overall number of websites visits grew 4-fold. This became evident from the analysis of Kaspersky Safe Kids parental control module of Q1 2020. As a response to this trend, the company offered everyone to use their parental control feature for free for the next three months.
Children’s activity on the internet is as important nowadays as their behavior and social environment outside. This is why it is crucial to help a child to navigate through the information that surrounds them in the web, making sure that the experience is positive. During the worldwide lockdown, children are prone to look for entertainment online more than ever, so this period has shown some important changes in their behavior that correlated with the increase of activity.
The most definite trend was an increase in the role of social media. The share of children that actively use the internet for communications, such as messengers and social media in Saudi Arabia in March has grown to more than a quarter of the overall number (26,4%), comparing to less than a fifth in February (18,6%). This trend was accompanied by an increase in children’s interest in news resources throughout Q1 it accounted for around 4% of all website hits. However, most of the time, children were interested in consuming various contents, such as software, audio and video. March has also shown an increase of children’s interest to the e-commerce websites and online shops – in the middle of the quarantine (March) every 10th visit to the website children did was to one of such resources.
“Our statistics show that Saudi Arabia is not an exception, as all over the world children became more active online since the beginning of the pandemic. We urge parents not to panic – according to our data, the vast majority of children are most interested in socializing online and watching videos and listening to music or playing videogames, rather than in potentially unwanted content or disturbing news. What’s more, their activity online correlates with the adults’ interests during the quarantine: news, video content and shopping. If anything, this might be an opportunity to do these things together and bond, rather than worry.” – comments Andrey Sidenko, Head of Child Safety at Kaspersky Network.
To help parents protect their children from various Internet threats and unfavorable content, Kaspersky recommends:
- If you know what your child is looking for online, you can offer help and support, but use the information carefully
- Discuss with your child how much time they can spend on social media. Try to persuade your child not to use social media during school lessons or at night.
- Try not to limit your child’s social circle, but tell them to take care when choosing friends and acquaintances.
- Use reliable security software solution, like Kaspersky Total Security. It incorporates Kaspersky Safe Kids and helps to guard your family and private data, plus protect your kids online from cyber threats and explicit content. In these challenging times, staying safe is the top priority, so Kaspersky is now offering its best multi-device security free for 3 months
