DigiParenting Navigating Online Risks for Children

Kids may skip meals sleep and homework but they never consider disconnecting from their digital lives. Aside from the numerous opportunities provided by the Internet children face a variety of risks that parents practitioners and policymakers are constantly concerned about. By EU Kids Online online risks for children can be broadly defined as a set of intended/unintended and desired/undesired online experiences that upsets is unsupportable or harms them in any way. Given the rapid growth in digital technology the Internet is becoming part of childrens daily life which may offer new or slightly altered risks or harm. Those risks are not clearly classified yet. However researchers are more concerned about sexually related risks sharing personal information with strangers and cyberbullying as a range of online risks that children may face while they are online. In response to these challenges this study tested an online digi-parenting model for reducing childrens online risk. This survey included 420 Malaysian primary and secondary school students (9 to 16 years old) and one of their parents/guardians. with an average age of 12 most of whom were female (66%) and Malay and Muslim (74%). Students mostly use the internet after school (80%) or under the supervision of their parents (79%). Boys are more vulnerable to cyber risks than girls. The majority of parents/guardians were female (56%) Malay (73%) Muslim (74%) and between the ages of 31 and 50 (77.4%). In terms of education level 60% of parents/guardians have a diploma or lower level while 26% have a bachelors degree.