Abstract— Parents’ views are primarily important for children’s
effective and secure use of Internet and protecting them against the
threats of Internet. Therefore, this study aims at determining the
views of parents about the Internet use of their children who attend a
private elementary school in Turkey. Carried out through the
qualitative research method, the research data of the study were
collected from 33 parents and were analyzed by running descriptive
analysis, which is one of the qualitative data analysis methods. As a
result of the analysis, it was revealed that parents regard Internet as
the most developed technology, a window opening to the whole
world, and as a tool to attain information. Moreover, parents reported
that Internet has positive and negative effects together. Parents stated
that Internet use of their children has positive effects in terms of
providing support to education, attaining information, establishing
communication, and entertainment, while it has negative effects in
terms of content and of individual, psychological and physical
aspects. Based on parents’ views, this study provides some
suggestions regarding how children can use Internet safely.
Keywords—Internet, Internet and the child, Internet use of
children, Parents’ views.
I. INTRODUCTION
NTERNET is a crucial and indispensable technology of
daily life since it is an information and communication web
that enables people to attain information and to communicate.
Thanks to this feature, Internet becomes a new and colorful
play ground for children as well as an environment to
communicate and attain information, while for adults, it mostly
serves as a tool for communicating with others and attaining
information.
By the end of 2007, there were approximately 20 million
Internet users; however, this amount has reached to 26 million
by September, 2008 [1]. Furthermore, according to the report
This paper is an extended version of the study that was presented in
WSEAS EDU’08 and published