Just what Mum and Dad didn't need to know: More than one out of 10 British teens are hitting the Net to hunt for porn as well as information essential to completing their homework, according to the National Foundation for Economic Research.
Releasing the findings during an ongoing, eight-year study of 6,400 British students, the NFER said about 12 percent of 13-to-18-year-old British students indicated adult material was one of the main reasons they hit the Net, though homework remained the most common.
The NFER, doing the study for the British Department for Education and Skills, said 52 percent of the students they studied went online to use instant messaging and 36 percent went online to shop, while 18 percent went for news and current affairs and 9 percent went for discussion groups.
Among the same students, the NFER said, television remained the most trustworthy mass communication medium, with 48 percent of the students studied saying they trusted it in full or for the most part, while older students were less convinced than younger ones of media honesty and only 13 percent trusted newspapers.
The study is part of a British government review of citizenship lessons introduced across the country in 2002. The findings so far also determined about 67 percent of the students surveyed said they were not "very interested" in political matters.
