LODDON MALLEE - Cyber Safe Kids

(90%) and 85.7% reported hate advocacy. The things of least concern were online advertising
(45.7%), social networking (41.4%) and multiplayer games (40%).
A number of health and safety problems can be linked back specifically to internet use i.e.
compulsive internet use/“internet addiction” or be a consequence of internet use i.e. lack of
sleep or lack of physical activity. Teachers were asked to rate their concern about a number of
these problems occurring in their students.
Figure 24. Percentage of teachers who are concerned to very concerned about the impact
of internet use on children‟s health and safety.
% of Teachers
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Interestingly, the majority of teachers rated that they were concerned about all the above threats
to well being (with the exception of drug and tobacco use).
The internet poses a number of opportunities for young people to participate in illegal or
unethical activities such as plagiarism, cyber bullying, illegal file sharing, publishing obscene
material and computer hacking or spreading viruses. Teachers were asked to what extent they
were concerned about their students participating in these activities. The issue that they were
most concerned about was cyber bullying (88.2%) and posting inappropriate content (83.8%)
and they were least concerned about their students hacking (35.3%).
INTERVENTIONS TO KEEP YOUNG PEOPLE SAFE
As in the case with parents, we were keen to understand what teachers felt was needed in
relation to keeping children and young people safe online and also whom they felt should
deliver intervention. Therefore, the same range of possible solutions or interventions that were
presented to parents was also presented to teachers. Teachers were asked to rate whether they
54 LMCP Bendigo Region Report