The biggest risk for minors "is not using the internet in an intelligent way," says Xavier Bringués, from the University of Navarra, in Spain.
"We are talking about a smart technology of the XXI century that needs intelligent users," Bringués told BBC Mundo on the occasion of the International Day of Safe Internet on Tuesday, a date that aims to draw attention to how to take care of children under 18 when they use the Internet.
The appointment on the calendar is confirmation that new technologies are an increasingly important part of the lives of hundreds of millions of children and adolescents.
And for Bringués, the network is not a crime broth or a dark place. It is, like many other platforms, one more medium.
"Their risk is the same as other media such as television: that they enter their lives without those around them having the awareness that the internet will be used by a minor who is a subject in training," says the academic, who is one of the coordinators of the study "The interactive generation in Ibero-America".
This is an investigation on the habits of use of children between 6 and 18 years in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela
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