YNOT EUROPE – Parents who obsess about what their children see online may be raising a ruckus over nothing, a university research report released in late September reveals.

The research, conducted by the EU Kids Online project at the London School of Economics and Political Science, indicates only one in seven European children ages nine to 16 encountered sexually explicit material online last year — far fewer than the 50 to 90 percent exposure rate alarmist activists bandy about.

Likewise, very few children spend their free time circumventing parental content filters or hacking into password-protected networks. In fact, only 36 percent of nine- to 16-year-olds believe they are more net-savvy than their parents. Fewer than one-third are able to get around safety software and/or filters installed on the computers they use.

Children’s online behaviors seem almost sedate compared to the widespread hysteria about dangers lurking on the World Wide Web. While 38 percent of the 25,000 study participants ages nine to 12 used online social networks, the vast majority of them only connected with people they already knew in the real world. Only nine percent of kids had ever agreed to a face-to-face meeting with someone they first met online or knew of someone else who behaved thusly, and even then the vast majority asked a friend to go along with them to the meeting.

Not that the little devils can’t be sneaky when it suits them. The most common way in which children defy parental rules about internet usage is to go online at a friend’s house or via mobile phone, the study determined.

“Often the view of how children behave online is out of date and needs updating — that’s why we included the list of top 10 myths in our report [PDF],” said Professor Sonia Livingstone, who led the study. “For example, while parents worry more about ‘stranger danger,’ children find cyberbullying the most upsetting risk.”