SANTA CLARA, Calif.—A survey released by McAfee Inc., a security technology company, reveals that 22 percent of teens do not know what to do if they are cyber bullied.

“The Secret Life of Teens” study, conducted online by Harris Interactive, surveyed 955 U.S. 13-17 year olds (including 593 teens ages 13-15 and 362 teens aged 16-17) from May 4-17.

The results showed that one-in-three teens knows someone who has had mean or hurtful information posted about them online, such as sending anonymous E-mails, spreading rumors online, forwarding private information without someone’s permission or purposely posting mean or hurtful information about someone online.

Additionally, 14 percent of 13-17 year olds admit to having engaged in some form of cyberbullying behavior in 2010, while 22 percent say they wouldn’t know what to do if they were cyberbullied

Other results indicate that teens are providing more information than they should to strangers:

• 69 percent of 13-17 year olds have updated their status on social networking sites to include their physical location
• 28 percent of teens chat with people they don’t know in the offline world
  • 43 percent shared their first name
  • 24 percent shared their E-mail address
  • 18 percent shared a personal photo of themselves
  • 12 percent shared their cell phone number
• Girls are more likely than boys to chat with people online that they don’t know in the offline world, (32 percent vs. 24 percent), and 13-15 year old girls (16 percent) are more likely than boys the same age (7 percent) to have given a description of what they look like.

Approximately two in five teens say they don’t tell their parents what they do while they are online (42 percent) and that they would change their online behavior if they knew their parents were watching (36 percent). In an effort to further conceal online behavior, teens admit to the following:

• 38 percent of teens close or minimize the browser when their parents enter the room
• 32 percent of teens clear the browser history when they are done using the computer
• 55 percent of 13-17 year olds hide what they do online from parents

While most teens use the Internet for research and communicating with friends, three in five (62 percent) of teens also typically view or download some kind of media online—which can lead to dangerous downloads and other online threats that put the family computer at risk.

• More than a quarter of teens (27 percent) accidentally allowed a virus, spyware, or other software to infect the family computer
• Nearly half of teens (46 percent) of teens admit to downloading music or videos from a free service, which is much more likely to infect the family PC with everything from worms, viruses, ad-ware, spyware, or backdoors that allow people on the Internet to access the computer
• 16 percent of 16-17 year old boys have downloaded x-rated content

McAfee Inc. June 22, 2010 press release

 

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