Media Release

For Immediate Release
Thursday September 12, 2002

Web Awareness Workshops Offer Free Information and Training
To Parents

Brampton, Ontario - The Brampton Public Library, Town of Caledon Public Library, Brampton Safe City Association and Peel Regional Police have teamed up to provide 8 free workshops for parents on the issue of Internet safety for children. The workshops are part of a national initiative, (created by the Media Awareness Network and sponsored by Bell Canada, Industry Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Culture) to provide Internet education and public awareness for parents in libraries across the country.

The Web Awareness Workshop is designed to help parents understand the issues and challenges that children and youth face online, while teaching them ways to encourage safe and responsible Internet use by their children. The workshops are 90 minutes in length and cover topics such as: Internet usage trends by children; understanding the types of dangerous and inappropriate material on the Internet and how easily it can be accessed by young people; learning how to track the Internet sites your children have been visiting; creating family or classroom online agreements; finding good and appropriate Web sites, directories, portals and search engines; conducting effective online searches; using filtering or blocking techniques; protecting personal information in online environments; tracking where your kids have been on the Internet; disabling Java on your Web browser; protecting children from predators in chat rooms; and reporting offensive or illegal online content.

"With the Brampton Public Library being such a popular access point to the Internet for Brampton's children and teens, we felt it was imperative to join with our community partners at Brampton Safe City and Peel Regional Police in delivering these important and insightful workshops." Adele Kostiak, CEO, Brampton Public Library

For a complete list of workshop dates and times, please visit the Brampton Public Library Web site at www.bramlib.on.ca or look for a Web Awareness Workshop Flyer, (please see attached page 3), in local library branches. To register for a workshop, please call the Brampton Public Library at (905) 793-4636 or the Caledon Public Library at (905) 857-1431.

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The Web Awareness Workshops were developed in response to findings from a survey conducted by the Media Awareness Network in the spring of 2001. Over 5,682 students between the ages of 9 and 17 were surveyed in schools from across Canada. The study assessed how young Canadians actually use the Internet and generated some alarming findings. Among the survey results identified included:

• 99% of all children surveyed indicated that they used the Internet at some point and 79% of those did so from home;
• 84% of those children surveyed surfed the Internet on their own, without adult supervision;
• Over 50% of kids surveyed report having ended up on a porn site accidentally;
• E-mail at 71% followed by instant messaging and chat at 56% top the list of favourite online activities by children. These same activities are also the highest risk for their vulnerability to "predators" and "cyber stalkers";
• 70 % of children surveyed said their parents talked to them very little or not at all about what they did online;
  

A similar study conducted with parents by Media Awareness a year earlier found that 65% of parents thought that their kids were using the Internet for homework while children identified that they were actually using it for playing games, downloading music, using e-mail and visiting chat rooms. Although children did report using the Internet for schoolwork 38% of the time, it was clearly not as often as their parents had assumed.

About the Media Awareness Network (MNet)

MNet is a charitable not-for-profit national organization that aims to encourage critical thinking about media information, media entertainment and new communications technologies, while stimulating debate about the power of the media in the lives of children and young people. Their work is based on the premise that to be functionally literate in the world today, young people need critical thinking skills to "read" all messages that are informing, entertaining and selling them every day. Media Awareness is a world leader in providing educational approaches to emerging Internet related issues.