High schoolers use smart phones for studying

According to a survey conducted by the Children's Department under the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, in the third quarter of 2022, 89 percent of Vietnamese children access and use the internet. Worse, 87 percent of children spend 5-7 hours a day surfing the internet.

This morning, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training held a seminar on "Improving cyberinformation security awareness and skills" for teachers of junior high schools and high schools at Le Hong Phong High School for the Gifted in District 5.

One of the alarming facts today is that only 36 percent of children or about a third of children mainly between the ages of 16 and 17 are taught about cyber safety.

From the above survey results, experts confirmed that it is impossible to ban students from using the internet; instead, schools and parents need to cooperate to orient and educate students on attitudes and behavior to use the internet appropriately.

Mr. Le Duy Tan, Head of the Secondary Education Department under the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training said that information technology brings many benefits and problems to users; hence, people should be cautious in browsing the internet.

Currently, a part of teachers and students are unaware of cyber criminals when using online tools. For example, regarding the debate about whether the ChatGPT software is good or bad, a representative of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training said that the answer depends on the user's goals.

According to Mr. Nguyen Van Nam, Senior Advisor of ICDL Vietnam, the current generation of teachers have never or very little had contact with the internet when they were students. Meanwhile, the internet has developed rapidly in schools in the past 5 years and there have been many bad trends that seriously affect students.

Accordingly, to help students recognize traps and problems in the internet, schools need to organize training activities to raise students' awareness of cyberinformation security; thereby, helping students avoid possible risks when using the online network.

For example, schools organize seminars for parents to increase awareness of information safety and security. Parents will be taught how to identify unsafe risks on the internet as well as tools psychological to accompany their children in browsing in internet.

Children are taught not to share personal information online, not respond to emails, texts, or messages from strangers, and not post or share photos online; especially, they should never agree to meet someone that they met online. In addition, they should inform parents and teachers when having trouble communicating on the network environment for advice and help.

Nguyen Duc Trung, an expert in charge of the ICDL Digital Student program, shared that the results of a study on the use of digital platforms in Vietnam show that we are only behind the United States in terms of usage rate but the percentage of people who regularly use social networks (nearly 80 percent of the population) is equivalent to the United States - the world's leading country in technology.

Meanwhile, the country's technology platform is having many problems. In particular, the percentage of internet users accessing the internet with smartphones in Vietnam currently accounts for more than 95 percent much higher than many countries in the world.

In addition, a Vietnamese person usually spends 6 hours 30 minutes a day on average surfing the internet. In particular, a Vietnamese person spends 2 hours and 28 minutes a day on social networks on average.

Roughly 71.4 percent of Vietnamese people use the internet to connect with friends and relatives while 69 percent of them search for information, 68.4 percent read news and events, and 59.6 percent watch videos, TV shows, and movies.

Source: SGGP