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Report on The SmartGirl Internet Survey: What do you do online?
Smart girls decide for themselves™.
There are almost no limits to what you can do on the Internet. You can play games, talk to friends, even apply for jobs or shop! Last month we asked SmartGirls how they use the Internet, so read on to find out what they said!
But first, some basics:
We had 369 people respond to this survey, 349 of whom were girls. (That's 95%!)
144 respondents were the oldest in their families, 80 were the middle child, 99 are the youngest, and 38 were an only child.
The three biggest ethnic groups that responded were European (33%) and Multiracial (13%), while African, Asian, and Latin American were all close to 10% each. 80 SmartGirls chose not to tell us what ethnic background they came from.
238 (65%) of the SmartGirls were from the United States, while 7 were from Australia, 20 were from Canada, 25 were from England, 15 were from the Philippines, 5 were from Ireland, and 4 were from South Africa. There were two each from Croatia, Indonesia, Mexico, Scotland, United Arab Emirates, and Ecuador. There was also one each from Armenia, Barbados, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Congo, the Dominican Republic, Germany, India, Madagascar, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Norway, Oman, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Western Sahara, and Wales. That's a lot of countries represented!
Most of those who took this survey were from a town, followed by the suburbs and then a big city.
Looks like most of the SmartGirls are between 10 and 16.
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| How old are the Cyber-Savvy SmartGirls? |
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Now that we know who responded, lets find out what they had to say!
We wanted to know some basics about how SmartGirls use the Internet. Here's what we found:
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| How often do you get online? |
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SmartGirls are on the Internet a lot! 63% get online more than once a day and 80% are online for an hour or more when they do log on. That may have to do with the fact that almost 40% have a computer that is connected to the Internet right in their rooms! For those who don't have a Internet in their rooms, it looks like at home is still the most common place (57%) to use the Internet.
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| Do you have a computer in your room that is hooked up to the Internet? |
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We wanted to know how safe SmartGirls were online, so we asked about parental controls on their computers. 270 respondents reported that there weren't any parental controls on the computer they use for the Internet, while only 87 said there were. 169 respondents said that their parents know at least some of their screen names and 101 said that their parents don't know any of their screen names. It looks like most listened to their parents because only 90 created accounts after they were told not to.
In response to our question "What do you do online?" homework, IM, email, and social networking were the clear winners!
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| What do you do online? |
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| Instant Messenging, homework, email, and social networking are all pretty equal. |
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Since Email, IM and social networking are so popular, its a good thing we asked more questions about them! From the responses we got, it looks like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and Friendster are the most popular ones. Between 220 and 300 of those who answered our survey have an email, email, and social networking accounts.
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We were happy to see that SmartGirls were careful about what websites they register with. 272 (78%!) register sometimes, which means that they don't give their information to just anyone who asks! We were also pleased to see that 76% check the privacy policy all or at least some of the time. We would like to see 100%, but 76% is pretty good!
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| How often do you register? |
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. There is nowhere that is truer than on the Internet! You might not think so, but people can learn a lot about you from the pictures you put on the internet. They can figure out what school you go to if you are wearing a school shirt or where you live if there are street signs in the background. We asked if SmartGirls were careful about what kind of pictures they put up on the web. Thankfully 79% said they were careful. Hopefully after reading this report, more SmartGirls will be aware of what they pst on the web.
Along the same lines, we asked if users set their privacy controls. 42 don't know what privacy controls are and that worries us! Ask your parents or friends how to turn on privacy controls - its important! 54 choose not to use privacy controls. 87 limit what strangers can see on their profiles, and 160 have set their privacy controls so that only friends can see their profiles.
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| Do you use privacy controls? |
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The Internet is a great place to meet new people. You can talk to a person on the other side of the world, as easily as someone sitting next to you! You do have to be careful about what you tell them, though. It looks like most respondents don't meet new people online (143) and for those who do, they meet people through social networks (100). We were happy to see that most users don't give out too much specific information. Check out the graph below to see what SmartGirls are willing to say.
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| What kind of information do you give out? |
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Since we were asking all these questions about Internet use, we wanted to know where SmartGirl fit in. It turns out most users visit SmartGirl less than once a week (60%) and that they spend less than half an hour here when they do.
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| How long do you spend on SmartGirl? |
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When we asked what can we do to help SmartGirls be safer on the Internet, we got some great responses! Here are some of them:
"Set up a page that's dedicated to internet safety. But making sure it's easy to read and looks nice so people won't just ignore it."
"Just remind people that even the littlest thing, like not reading privacy policies or signing up on a social network that doesn't seem that safe can put a person in danger."
"Provide stuff to schools so they can promote safety and teach us about what we should be looking for."
"Encourage girls to always look at Privacy Policies and don't give out information. People everywhere can be approached online by strangers. I think many people give out too much information and they need to be warned. My parents are very alert and will not let me give out any information, and I think that more parents should be alert too, and I wish that more kids would know of what could happen. I saw a program about 'cyber-bullying' and I really am hoping that SmartGirl would put something up- so many people would look at it. In this world, it would take a huge miracle to stop cyber-bullying. But I think SmartGirl could start to make it better- I think you could make a difference. Make sure to put the message up everywhere."
"Maybe create a new branch of SmartGirl, with articles about current events: you could include articles involving girls who didn't play it safe online, and with tips at the end to show girls how to be safer online. You could have an "Internet Safety Tip of the Day" such as "never give away your mom's maiden name on the internet", and then telling why. Thanks for making an effort to keep us safe!! "
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Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts
with us!
Please remember that all web-based polls
are not scientific because the pollsters cannot randomly select the
respondents to participate in the surveys.
All our surveys are anonymous; check out our privacy
policy. All data copyright 1996-2007.
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