Am I going to be so lucky in my old age? Let me explain why.

After turning 60, I received an offer I could not resist. A certain Miss Bintu Felicia emailed me informing me that she is single and looking for an honest and nice person whom she can partner with. How sweet of her, I said. Felicia continued: "I don't care about your colour, ethnicity, status or sex. Upon your reply to this mail I will tell you more about myself and send you more of my picture. I am sending you this beautiful mail, with a wish for much happiness."

What more can one wish for? That's just for starters. More "good" news was soon on the way.

I found another incredible offer in my in box. I was promised a few millions for helping someone or other with a strange name to get his cache out of his country. This could easily provide me with a pension fund I had never dared dream off: the beautiful Felicia and the stash of million!

I pinched myself. My good sense told me that neither Felicia nor the promised millions would materialise. I am not the only one that had the Promised Land perched in front of me to discover that it was only a mirage. I guess that most probably most of you have received these sorts of offers. What's incredible is that there are many – quite naturally not the above-than-average intelligent followers of this blog – who swallowed the bait and suffered the consequences.

This is one of the ugly faces of emails and the Internet! There are many beautiful and positive facets, as well. They are not part and parcel of our lives. What can we do without them?

All efforts should be done to use them well. The younger one is the more vulnerable one can be. What is the pattern of use of those who, because of their age, do not know a world without emails, the World Wide Web, Facebook, Google etc?

Hoping to learn more I recently attended a conference in London where the results of an EU funded research project called EU Kids on Line II was going to be released. The research project under the leadership of Prof Sonia Livingstone researched 25,000 European kids and their parents. The kids interviewed were between the ages of nine and 16.

The research was made in 2010 which is very recent, though in the Internet world a year is not a short period of time and consequently some of the results would be different today. This, however, does not diminish anything from the great validity of the study and its learned conclusions which should provide a good foundation for the enactment of policies in this area.

Let me share with you few results taken from the official report of the study:

Going online is now thoroughly embedded in children's daily lives. Fifteen to sixteen year olds spend an average of 118 minutes on line every day. Nine to ten year olds use it for an average of 58 minutes daily.

49% go online in their bedroom and one third go online via a mobile phone or handheld device (p. 12)Children's exposure to sexual content online appears to be highest in Nordic countries and some Eastern European countries; children report lesser exposure in Southern Europe and predominantly Catholic countries (p. 23).

However estimates for exposure to pornography online are lower than many anticipated (p. 42).6% have been bullied online while more children are bullied offline (p.24). 60% of those who bully – online or offline – have themselves been bullied by others (p.42).Meeting new people online is commonplace for European children. Only in a small minority of cases is there cause for serious concern (p. 27). Social networking sites enable children to communicate and have fun with their friends, but not everyone has the digital skills to manage privacy and personal disclosure. Parental mediation is fairly effective, despite the belief that children ignore parental rules (p. 18).

Besides parents, teachers and peers have a vital role to play: 63% of European children say that they have received internet safety advice from parents, 58% from teachers and 44% from their peers (p. 36).

Ideally every child should have at least one person to turn to for help when he/she meets risks on the internet.12% of children say that they have been bothered or upset by something on the internet – but most children do not report being bothered or upset by going online (p.3).44% of the 9-16 year olds say that it is "very true" that "there are lots of things on the internet that are good for children of my age", though younger children are less satisfied with online provision: only 34% of 9-10 year olds say this (p.2).40% of 9-16 year old internet uses in Europe have "looked for new friends on the internet"; 34% have "added people to my friends list or address book that I have never met face-to-face"; and 16% have "pretended to be a different kind of person on the internet from what I really am."

One sixth have sent personal information to someone they had never met face-to-face and the same amount even sent a photo to someone they had never met (p. 16).

Unfortunately Malta was not included in EU Kids online II study, but following representations from Malta, we will be included in EU Kids Online III.