Last week both the Malta Communications Authority as well as the European Commission published respective surveys about minors’ use of the internet. But while the local study focused on parents’ and children’s ‘perceptions’ of online safety hazards, it stopped short of gauging the actual incidence of worrying online experiences.

That fact that, according to the MCA study, 97 per cent of Maltese minors have internet access at home is extremely positive and all due credit should be given to past initiatives aimed at bringing the country’s children into the now vital online world.

But with that growth comes a tandem growth in the online threats potentially faced by children navigating the sometimes murky waters of the internet. And more than half of Maltese children, it turns out, use the internet from their bedrooms or a study – implying that very little supervision of their online activities is carried out.

This is not to say that the internet is a cesspool of seediness and paedophiles, but the internet does have a more ominous underbelly, and one that is easily accessible at the click of a mouse.

Nor does it mean that parents need to be tracking every keystroke their children make. What it means is that parents need to properly educate their children about the potential dangers of chatting and befriending strangers in the online world, and that children themselves need to be made wise enough so as not to tumble into a pitfall.

Along such lines, one alarming statistic emerging from the EU survey was that one in 12 children has met an online contact in the offline world.

The Maltese government recently introduced legislation providing for a minimum one-year and a maximum four-year jail sentence for sexual predators making use of internet technologies, such as today’s wide array of social networking and chat websites, to lure minors into meeting them in person.

The new law is particularly relevant to this day and age, in which minors are becoming more and more frequent users of networks such as Facebook, MSN, Twitter and Hi-5. It aims to address this new and real threat – a major source of concern for a great many parents, especially those who are not quite as technologically adept as their 21st-century children.

What we need, instead of risk ‘perceptions’ of parents and children, are harder facts, especially in terms of how life on the internet transposes itself into real life – such as how many online encounters have materialised into face-to-face meetings.

Yes, both surveys dealt with online bullying, but that is merely an extension of everyday, age-old bullying. The plethora of internet sites purpose-built for networking and making new friends is, on the other hand, a new area that has emerged over the last few years and one which at least 80 per cent of Maltese minors are engaged in. It is also one that sexual predators and paedophiles are also easily able to use for their own sordid purposes.

At the end of the day, despite all the supervision parents may have over their children’s internet use, given the prevalence of internet over mobile telephony and wi-fi hotspots dotting more and more of the country, it is the children who are online themselves who need to be on the ball.