US stricter than Europe at monitoring kids online

American children are more likely than European kids to have their activities on the Web monitored by parents according to a global survey on Internet use amongst young people.

The Face of the Web: Youth survey found that 40 percent of US children have restricted access. This is four times the highest figure in Europe. Interestingly though, British children have the highest level of restrictions on the amount of time they are allowed to spend on the Internet.

Out of the 16 countries surveyed by market research company Ipsos-Reid, America is where children are most likely to have restrictions on the sites that they can visit. One in five Americans between the ages 12 and 24 with home Internet access has his or her online activities limited by filtering software. This is in stark contrast to European figures, that stated only four percent of children in France, three percent in Italy and Sweden, and two percent in the Netherlands face the same limitation.

Nearly three in ten American children also report some form of parental monitoring over the sites they visit, compared with only eight percent of kids in Spain and ten percent in Sweden.

"European parents seem to have a much more relaxed attitude when it comes to what and how their children see and surf online," said Edward Morawski, vice president of global research for Ipsos-Reid.

On a global scale, two-thirds of the 10,000 children with home Internet access questioned have no restriction on the amount of time that they are spending online, or on the content that they are viewing.

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