12% of Andorran adolescents send erotic content from their mobile phones according to a study
Unicef Andorra promotes a survey on the impact of technology on adolescence
ANDORRA LA VELLA (ANDORRA), Nov. 8 (EUROPA PRESS) –
12% of young people between the ages of 10 and 18 in Andorra admit to having sent personal photos or videos with erotic content via mobile and 35.6% say they have received it, according to the survey on the impact of technology in adolescence promoted by Unicef Andorra.
The Minister of Education of the Government of Andorra, Ester Vilarrubla, the director of Unicef Andorra, Albert Mora, and the coordinator of the Andorra Research + Innovation (ARI) sociology group, Joan Micó, presented this Tuesday the data collected by the study .
The survey also concludes that half of adolescents claim to have received messages with sexual content and 15.4% say that an adult has made a sexual proposal to them over the Internet.
Up to 2,161 young people between 10 and 18 years old have answered the survey, from the sociology group, Joan Micó has highlighted that the results are “very reliable” due to the high participation, according to him.
For her part, Minister Ester Vilarrubla stressed that the objective of the study was, in addition to gaining an in-depth understanding of the habits of adolescents regarding the use of the Internet, social networks and video games, as well as identifying possible bad habits and risky practices .
Vilarrubla has recognized that new technologies are part of the lives of adolescents “and they will not go away” so the data obtained will provide tools, in his opinion, deeper to work risks, such as those linked to sex .
Beyond the practice of ‘sexting’, 7.9% of the participants claimed to have been victims of blackmail with the threat of making intimate images public, about half of the respondents assumed they had visited pages with sexual content, and a 14% think they may have been a victim of cyberbullying at some point in their life.
As a result of the data, the experts consider that 36.2% of young people, especially girls, may be making problematic use of the Internet, and regarding games and video games, they confirm that 60% of young people use them weekly, with an average of 10 hours of use and, one in three, allocating money to it.
From the ARI, it is estimated that for 17% of adolescents the use of video games could be a problem and an additional 3.1% could present symptoms of a possible addiction.
PARENTAL CONTROL
Vilarrubla has pointed to the little parental control that is applied: in the survey data, 25.4% of the participants report that their parents impose rules on internet use, 24% have a limit on hours of use and 14% .3% have control over the content they access.
Consequently, the survey shows a “direct relationship between low parental supervision, increased risk situations and decreased emotional health of young people.”
Young people also say that about 41% of their parents use their mobile phones during family meals, to which the minister has highlighted the “very important” role of parents to control and accompany young people with their online activities.
SLEEP WITH THE MOBILE
The survey also indicates that 90% of adolescents have a mobile phone with an Internet connection and that the majority use it both to work at school and for fun: of all of them, half sleep with the mobile in the room, and about 18% connect every day after midnight.
Ester Vilarrubla has announced that a comprehensive plan is being worked on with parents’ associations and associations related to adolescents and with the support of Andorra Telecom (the national telecommunications company) to work on training for students and families in order to solve the “problems detected”.