Fax: (0034) 91 7400207
ESPAÑA
E-mail: contacto@protegeles.com
También puede encontrarnos en:
Our Studies
PROTEGELES work is not only about locating child pornography web pages, reporting its existence to the police and so on, it is also about prevention.
PROTEGELES carries out detailed studies: to identify as soon as possible the new risks that children may be running when surfing the net.
topChild safety
PROTEGELES work is not only about locating child pornography web pages, reporting its existence to the police and so on, it is also about prevention.
The Internet and new technologies world is an ever-changing and evolving world. This means that new problem and risks, as well as positive aspects of the net, can occur any time and it is often very difficult to foresee how and when this is going to happen. This is the reason why PROTEGELES carries out detailed studies: to identify as soon as possible the new risks that children may be running when surfing the net.
After having identified the problem, having made public our studies’ results and conclusions, PROTEGELES always launches a preventive campaign that includes all necessary means to offer an alternative to the risky situation, or at least, it proposes a solution. These campaigns are directly addressed to the educative community: students, parents and teachers.
Our studies: “Child Safety and Children’s habits on Internet”.
This was the first study accomplished by PROTEGELES and it was carried out in collaboration with another Spanish NGO called ACPI (Action against Child Pornography in its Spanish Acronym) and the Spanish Child Ombudsperson, who undertook its publication.
The Child Ombudsperson andPROTEGELES' president while making the
study's presentation
In November 2002, the Child Ombudsperson and PROTEGELES’ president made a joint presentation of the study’s results and conclusion to the Spanish most relevant media. For the completion of this study, around 4.000 students from 14 to 17 years old and both sexes were surveyed at their educative centres, cybercentres, public places where they like to join and through some Internet sites for children.
This study, which most relevant results are available here after, allowed us to identify the risks to which children are exposed while surfing the net. This is extremely useful when it comes to defining our preventive campaigns.
In the other hand, it is important to know that these risks mainly concern children who use Internet very often, and this, of course, doesn’t include all children who may use internet from time to time. The ratio of Spanish children concerned by this study is 25% to 30%.
Relevant data
- Only one out of three children using Internet mention searching for information as his or her main objective: 36% of them use Internet to chat online, 17% to play computer games online and 13% to look for and download music.
- Almost half of the surveyed children (48%) connect to Internet very often or nearly every day, 26.5% use Internet several days a week and only 14.5% of them connect to Internet once a week. Finally, 11% do it even less often, two or three times a month.
- Considering the number of hours that children or young people stay connected to Internet, 65.5% of youngsters use Internet less that 5 hours a week (among them, 33.5% less than 2 hours a week and the remaining 32% do it 2 to 5 hours a week). 19.% of children surfing Internet do it 5 to 10 hours a week and only 15% of them do it more than 10 hours a week.
- The large majority of teenagers that use Internet quite frequently do it from their home’s computer on usual basis (84%). 11% prefer going to a cybercentre and 4% to a friend’s house. Just 2.5% of surveyed children admit using their school’s computers.
- When it comes to searching useful information for their schoolwork, half of the surveyed children (49.5%) affirm finding the information they need quite easily while 42% only find it “sometimes” and 8.5% find it “on rare occasions”.
Anorexia and bulimia defence and support on internet
Our campaign against “Anorexia and bulimia defence and support on Internet”
Our study “Anorexia and Bulimia defence and support on Internet” , later on published by the Spanish Child Ombudsperson, supposed a great shock for many people, specially Internet regular users who did have no idea about the existence of this kind of pages, called pro-ANA and pro-MIA. In these pages, anorexia and bulimia are presented as “freely chosen ways of life” and children visiting the pages are taught dangerous and radical ways to achieve an almost-impossible body weight.
The Child Ombudsperson togetherwith PROTEGELES' president, ADANER's
president and Dr Carmen Gómez Candela
from La Paz Hospital.
While the study was being made public, PROTEGELES and the Spanish Child Ombudsperson launched through the Internet a joint preventive campaign structured around the following guidelines::
- 1º. Presentation of the study’s conclusions. This presentation had a wide coverage by nearly all Spanish national media: TV channels, newspapers, and many radio stations broadcasted the results of the study. Besides, also some French and Latin-American media broadcasted it.
- 2º. 2. Creation and promotion of the alternative webpage: www.anaymia.com. This page is designed and organized following the looks and display of pro-ANA and pro-MIA pages but with truthful and scientific information about these two illnesses. The objective of this page is to highlight all the misleading information provided in pro-ANA and pro-MIA pages as well as to raise awareness among the users of these pages on the real risks that they may run if they follow the suggestions of such pages.
- 3º. Closure of the pages promoting anorexia and bulimia. PROTEGELES has searched this kind of pages and thanks to the collaboration agreements passed with the main ISPs; they have closed those pages that PROTEGELES has reported to them. Last year, more than 350 pro-ANA and pro-MIA pages were closed in this way.
As a result of our campaign against the defence and support of anorexia and bulimia on Internet, many young girls suffering from these diseases have dared to ask for help through the email address specifically created for this purpose by PROTEGELES and that they can find in the web page associated to the campaign. We have received mails from girls who are just starting to develop the illness and from girls who are suffering from them since a long time. Due to the huge quantity of mails we received, we decided to set up a helpline in order to provide these girls with personalized and professional help. Since 2004, PROTEGELES is providing psychological help (we set up a team of psychologist composed by 7 people) to more than 250 girls.
In May 2005, we launched our Second Campaign against Anorexia and Bulimia on Internet. It was named YOU ARE MORE THAN JUST AN IMAGE and a new associated page was created:
- www.masqueunaimagen.com. At the same time, the Spanish Ombudsperson presented to the media the results of our second study on the subject where we explained all the work we had been doing since the last campaign. The climax of this second campaign was the celebration in May 2005 of the First National Congress on Anorexia and Bulimia on Internet which took place at the Madrid Congress Palace. It is the first event about this specific subject all around the world.
Cibercentres and child safety
PROTEGELES is currently working in the completion of a detailed study on the habits of children that usually use cybercentres to get connected to the Internet.
All our objectives and studiesinspire a preventive campaign.
This study is simultaneously being accomplished in several Spanish cities and those children taking part on it are being surveyed at the cybercentres. The aim of the study is to define the reasons why children prefer going to this kind of centres to surf the net, the quality of the services provided there, the existence or not of security software on the computers and whether children are provided information about their safety on Internet or not. Besides, we want to know what kind of content they usually access on Internet, how often they surf the net and why they do it, among others.
The study’s results and the associated preventive campaign will be made public by PROTEGELES president and the Spanish Child Ombudsperson by autumn 2004.
PROTEGELES is a pragmatic organisation, which aim is not only raising social awareness and reporting illegal content, but also launching campaigns and editing educative materials specifically addressed to children.
- CAMPAÑA: "SQUEEZE THE WEB""
- CAMPAÑA: "ANOREXIA DEFENCE AND SUPPORT ON INTERNET"
- CAMPAÑA: "CHILD-FRIENDLY CYBERCENTRE"
