Bulgaria discusses youth online safety

Bulgaria's public discussion about children's online safety just got a boost from a national roundtable on the subject, SofiaEcho.com reports. The roundtable was held by Microsoft Bulgaria, Bulgarian child portal Az-deteto.com and the Blagodeyatel Foundation. Presented at it was a survey of Sofia children 6-14, which found that all of them use the Net. Most of their parents "say they control their children" online, half say they have concerns about their child using the Internet, and more than 90% say they don't have any parental-control software installed on the computers in their homes. "According to parents, the biggest threats to children online [are] malevolent strangers, Web sites with inappropriate content, games featuring violence, among others." The survey also found that 9-to-15-year-old Bulgarian children are the most active online. Eighty-one percent of Bulgarian kids use the Net from their homes and 38% use the Net every day.