'Real or not?' The online threat kids are facing with their schoolwork

"As parents, we're severely underestimating this risk." 

Think you understand all of the the risks your kids face online? You’re probably wrong!

That’s my take-out from reading a recent global survey to mark Safer Internet Day. Far from overestimating the dangers, it seems we parents are underestimating them. 

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There are risks to being online beyond just square eyes

A few weeks ago, as I met my kids at the end of their first day of high school, I was struck by how physically small and vulnerable they appeared next to the older students, many of whom looked like adults in my eyes.

That triggered a couple of conversations around the dinner table that night on the topic of good and bad influences. One discussion was on screen-time. Like most parents, the device rules in our household have tended to take a back-seat during school holidays.

The other chat was about explaining there are risks to being on-line beyond just square eyes.

To demonstrate, I did a short online quiz with them designed to test whether I could judge if a series of images were real or fake. I consider myself fairly well-informed and web savvy, so it was a shock that I got less than half right!

That’s better than most people, as it turns out. The 2025 Global Online Safety Survey by tech company Microsoft, released earlier this year found Australian adults were wrong 60 percent of the time when it came to judging real images from AI-generated ones.

There was some good news though.

Parents are apparently getting better at judging the level of risk their kids are exposed to (though we’re still underestimating it) and, after taking tests like the one I did, becoming more aware of the challenges.

More than half of the teens surveyed said they had been exposed to some online risk in the last year, ranging from misinformation, graphic violence or extremist content to cyberbullying, harassment, hate speech or threats of violence.

Thankfully, three quarters of those said they had taken the step of blocking, muting or unfriending the source and two thirds had spoken to someone about it.

Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, only 2/5 had reported what they’d seen.

Paul McKeon and his son. Image: supplied

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We can’t even trust our own eyes sometimes

When I was my kids’ age if you wanted a computer you literally had to build it yourself. The Internet was unknown outside of academic circles.

It goes almost without saying that being a 12-year-old in 2025 is a lot more complex than it was in my day. Kids now have access to the sum total of human knowledge at their fingertips.

The irony is, of course, it is getting harder and harder to separate fact from fiction. We can’t even trust our own eyes sometimes, as I found out.

Until now my kids’ contact with the online world has largely been via devices at home with plenty of parental controls. But that is about to change. Part of high school, as  we’re discovering, is loosening the apron strings and learning to trust their judgement.

That’s not to downplay the risks of course and there are resources to help us parents.

Australia’s eSafety Commission offers on-line safety basics, as do a number of not-for-profit groups, technology and telecommunication companies.

My biggest take-away from reading the survey, my own experience with the quiz, and then talking about it with my kids, is not to make assumptions and instead talk openly about online risks to help minimize the chance of them blaming themselves.

I’m learning that part of being a parent of high school kids is allowing them more responsibility for their own choices and the consequences; while making sure they understand that making mistakes, and learning from them, is also part of growing up.

You can take the Real or Not quiz here.

Originally published as 'Real or not?' The online threat kids are facing with their schoolwork