54 percent Indian parents have discovered that their child has visited inappropriate websites: McAfee

McAfee has released a new report ‘New Family Dynamics in a Connected World’ after conducting a global study to research about the behaviour, habits and attitude of families towards evolving technology. The company wanted to check how families are adapting to the increasingly connected lifestyle that is taking over our lives. The company commissioned OnePoll in December 2016 to survey about 13,000 adults between the age of 18 to 55 and older that have used internet-connected devices on a daily basis in 14 countries across the world.

Anand Ramamoorthy, Managing Director for McAfee in South Asia adds, “In today’s connected world, parents play a crucial role to decide on the usage of technology and how it can influence their kids’ lives. As Indians shift towards smart connected homes, we must help parents actively manage the way their families interact with connected devices to ensure that security and privacy measures are implemented.”

The study pointed out that most Indian parents are concerned about the dangers that digital world poses in terms of cyber crimes and identity thefts as about 93 percent have discussed these issues with their children. The partial reason for discussions about such topics is because of the fear that 49 percent parents have that their child could be interacting with cyber criminals online or social predators.

However, the fear and concerns about cyber security are largely backed by outdated methods of monitoring as about 59 percent of parents keep the internet connected devices in their possession handing the devices to their kids where they themselves can monitor the activity. This is a far cry from the 36 percent parents who use software tools to monitor the activity of their kids.

After monitoring the internet activity of their children, about 54 percent parents have discovered that their child has visited an inappropriate website. Parents have tried to minimise that by limiting the amount of time that their children spend in front of a screen with 57 percent limiting it to 1-2 hours per day while 21 percent allowing it to be less than an hour per day.

One interesting thing to note here is that 54 percent number is the highest when compared to 13 other countries in the survey. The changes in habit and behaviour are not only limited to discussions and concerns and they extend to the household lifestyle as the report found that 84 percent parents allowed their kids to bring an internet-connected device to the bed. About 50 percent of parents in India have argued with their children about bringing the connected device to the bed. The interesting thing here is that about 71 percent of parents have been called on by their children for bringing internet-connected devices to family time.