Nearly 90% of Taiwanese teenagers use social network sites: survey

Almost 90 percent of teenagers aged 7-15 in Taiwan are members of social networks, with an average of three accounts per person, and on average utilization of two hours a day, according to a recently available survey.


A sum of 87 percent of elementary and junior students have social networking accounts, according to a survey conducted by the Children Welfare League Basis (CWLF) from May 8-23, with 1,542 valid respondents.


On Tuesday the CWLF announced the survey results at a press conference in Taipei, noting that each respondent comes with an average of 3.8 social media accounts and uses those accounts 16.7 hours weekly on average.


The survey, with a confidence degree of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 2.49 percentage points, showed 9.4 percent of respondents utilized social networking sites a lot more than 40 hours weekly and 60.8 percent used gadgets until midnight.


Nearly 63 percent of respondents considered it vital that you stay online, 39.9 percent became anxious if they were offline or without their cellphone, the survey stated, adding that 82.7 percent of respondents own a smartphone, with the median age of ownership being 10.1 years.


Furthermore, 46.7 percent of respondents didn't protect their privacy, with 33.2 percent allowing websites to gather their private information, the survey said.


The survey also discovered that 56. 1 percent of respondents experienced scary or violent content material, 37.3 had seen pornographic materials online; 27.6 percent had negative encounters on social networking sites, including cyber harassment or bullying.


With the prevalence of short videos, 35.9 percent of respondents had uploaded videos with 35.3 percent performing so once a week and 9. 3 percent doing so daily.


The study revealed four risks faced by elementary and junior students using social media sites, including internet addiction, usage of personal information, contact with inappropriate content and cyber bullying, head of the CWLF's policymaking center Li Hung-wen (李宏文) said at the press conference.


Li lamented the truth that a lot of parents pay insufficient focus on their children's social media use, providing them with cellphones but making no effort to make sure they understand the dos and don'ts of the web.


Moreover, some parents are dependent on social media sites themselves, Li said.


The CWLF advised parents to accomplish more to safeguard their children's privacy, monitor their contacts on social websites and remind them to be cautious when commenting online, while also urging the federal government to set up a company focused on managing internet safety.