Ofcom's annual Children's Media Literacy Audit

How do the children in your school compare with Ofcom's findings?

• A quarter of children aged 8-12 who use the internet at home say they have a profile on Facebook, Bebo or MySpace, new Ofcom research revealed recently. These sites have a minimum user age of 13!
• Thankfully, 83% of these children have their profile set so that it can only be seen by friends, and 4%have a profile that can't be seen. 9 in 10 parents of these children who are aware that their child visits social networking sites (93%) also say that they check what their child is doing on these types of sites. However 1 in 6 (17%) parents of this group are not aware that their child visits social networking sites.
• Ofcom's annual Children's Media Literacy Audit provides an overview of media literacy among children and young people and their parents and carers. The report also includes internet audience data which showed that amongst 5-7 year old home internet users, just over a third (37%) visited Facebook in October 2009 (but did not necessarily have a profile).

Downloading TV programmes, films and music

• Downloading or watching TV programmes or films on the internet has increased by 4 percentage points in the past year by children aged 8-15 who use the internet at home (from 17% in 2008 to 21% in 2009).
• At the same time, 44%of 12-15s say they think that downloading shared copies of films and music for free should not be illegal, with 18% saying they don't know and 38% saying it should be illegal. Boys aged 12-15 are more likely to say it should not be illegal (48 per cent).

Seeing is believing

• Blogs or sites like Wikipedia where people can add or change information are visited by 1 in 5 (18%) of 8-11s and half of 12-15s (48%) who use the internet at home. Users of these sites aged 8-11 are much more likely than 12-15s to believe that the information on these types of sites is all or mostly true (70% vs 48%) with boys aged 8-15 more likely than girls of this age to believe that all or most of the information is true (59% vs 46%).
• 2 in 5 users of social networking sites aged 8-11 and 12-15 also believe that all or most of the information on these sites is true (38% and 40% respectively).
• 1 in 4 12 to15year olds (27%) who use search engines think that search engines only return results from websites with truthful information.