WITH POLL/VIDEO: New U-M survey poses question: How old should
children be to use the Internet alone? A recent survey conducted
by the University of Michigan shows that most adults think
children should be at least 13 before being online alone and
support expanding federal laws regarding children’s safety when
browsing the Internet, according to results released Monday.
About two-thirds of adults surveyed also said children should be
at least 13 years old to be able to use the Internet without
supervision, according to the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital
National Poll on Children’s Health. However, 29 percent of the
parents surveyed with children between the ages of 9 and 12
years old said their children have devices with Wi-Fi enabled,
meaning many children could be online and unsupervised. About 18
percent of those parents also said their children have their own
social networking profile. Facebook restricts access to users
under the age of 13. Adults surveyed strongly supported updates
to the Children’s Onlin