New Delhi: As a "risky behaviour", more than half of Indian teens meet people in real life whom they found online, security solutions provider McAfee said Monday.
This "risky behaviour" is the highest in Indian teens and tweens compared to countries like Australia, Singapore, the US and Germany.
"Today, the teens and tweens are online for a longer duration of time on their smartphones and tablets. They are very comfortable operating in the online world, yet the risks have never been greater," Melanie Duca, APAC Consumer Marketing Director, McAfee (part of Intel Security) told reporters here.
They need to understand the consequences of their online behaviour and how they can maintain their social engagement, she added.
About 52 percent said they chatted during online gaming, 49 percent on TV show fan pages and 42 percent live tweeting celebrities and others during a live show.
"What is also worrying is that despite majority (80 percent) of Indian youth being aware that their online activity can affect their identity, out of 90 percent who have done or posted something risky online, 70 percent have posted their contact details like email, phone, home address," Duca said.
According to McAfee's Tweens, Teens & Technology Report 2014, 70 percent of online youth in India spend more than 5 hours on the Internet in a normal week.
Though Internet access is still predominantly desktop based (41 percent), 36 percent said they use laptops and 27 percent smartphones.
While Facebook is by far the most popular site used (93 percent), followed by YouTube (87 percent) and WhatsApp (79 percent).
Two-thirds said they feel more accepted on social media than they do in real life, while 72 percent said they feel important or popular when they receive a lot of "likes" on the photos posted of themselves on social media.
"Keeping up to the social pressure, 64 percent even admitted to have tried reinventing themselves online by trying to appear older or creating a fake profile or posting photos that are not their own," Duca said.
About 46 percent said they put themselves in danger to see more engagement/activity on their posts (eg for more likes, comments, shares or retweets).
"What is alarming is that 10-12 year old social account users report higher daily access to Snapchat, Pinterest, Tinder, Tumblr, and Vine than their teen counterparts, even though the minimum age to register to these social networking sites is 13 years," Duca said.
More than half the respondents felt they are not old enough to worry about identity being stolen and 51 percent said they don't care about having privacy online.
Only 46 percent said their parents have had conversations with them about online safety. Others say their parents simply don't care (52 percent).
"Education is key to empowering both parents and children with the tools to tackle these risks. We need to do our part to provide appropriate assistance and teach them to stop, think and connect online," Duca said.
About 52 percent youth said they access social media accounts while at school with 57 percent being 8-12 years old v/s 47 percent 13-17 year old, the study found.
Also, 63 percent respondents said they do not turn off their location or GPS services across apps, while only 46 percent enable privacy settings on their social networking profiles to protect their content. This leaves their locations visible to strangers.
About 36 percent said they have been cyberbullied themselves based on appearance (46 percent), intelligence level (45 percent) and religion/race (40 percent).
Another 33 percent said they have witnessed cyberbullying of others, where 46 percent said the victims deleted their social media accounts and 42 percent said the victims became less social, underscoring its significant emotional impact.
