A very important element of the findings of the quantitative study commissioned by the Malta Communications Authority, which revealed that about 97 per cent of Maltese students aged between eight and 15 years have access to the internet from home with more than 54 per cent accessing it on a daily basis, is that the survey also exposed the need for more awareness and education.
The essence of the internet is that it provides an almost unending flood of information, offers extensive knowledge and marvellous facilities for exchanges and dialogue. Its potential for good is therefore enormous. It is, in many respects, a most powerful means of communication where people multiply their contacts and sharing in ways which, until just a few years ago, used to be unthinkable. Yet, the internet can also be used in degrading and damaging ways. This is much so the case when it is used, for example, for the diffusion of pornography.
As children become more knowledgeable and skilled with computers, many parents understandably are increasingly worried about the easy access their offspring have to potentially damaging information. It is well known that even if one is not looking for such things they can be hard to miss.
In this age of ours, where the internet is seen to be part of a still unfolding culture whose full implications are as yet imperfectly understood, it takes only a few mouse-clicks for an inquisitive child to find, for instance, a sea of sexually explicit or gratuitously violent and hate-filled material, sometimes disguised under web addresses that sound harmless and even helpful.
Moreover, accidental contact with this variety of harmful material or other situations of concern can have its effect too. One such concern could be certain chatrooms that can potentially present very dangerous hazards considering one never knows who may be involved. Yet, there are children who will happily give away a great deal of personal information about themselves or others.
The MCA study, based on interviews with 818 students from 35 schools and a survey filled by their parents or carers, showed that 71 per cent of parents/carers declared that by making new friends online, their child could be running a risk.
The situation clearly calls for an urgent coordinated follow-up by all those who supported the study, namely the Ministry of Education, Employment and the Family, the Church’s Secretariat for Catholic Education and the independent schools to move on, preferably hand in hand with the Office of the Commissioner for Children and other interested institutions, towards identifying where to go from here.
The proper education and training of children and young people in the positive and constructive use of the media, especially the internet, amounts to an investment society cannot do without if there really is the need for the proper formation of new generations to respond appropriately to the challenges they have to face when surfing the ’net.
Teaching about the internet and the new technology involves much more than teaching techniques. People, especially the young, need to learn how to function well in the world of cyberspace, make good judgments according to sound criteria about what they find there and use the new technology for their integral development and the benefit of others. Hence, what we should aim for are modern comprehensive programmes of media education aimed at helping students form, from an early age, standards of good taste and wise judgment.