Turkish children begin to use Internet at age 2

In Turkey, the age that children begin to learn about and use the Internet has dropped to 5 to 2, according to data announced at a symposium at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul.

The "EU Kids Online" study has shown that the number of children online doubled last year, compared to 2010 data. The findings demonstrate that children mostly spend time on the Internet playing individual games and watching videos. A significant increase has also been observed in social media use within the five years, showing that while social media use was 51.7 percent among children in 2010, the rate increased to 81.3 percent last year. The developments in mobile Internet technologies are one of the leading causes behind this rise. The surveyed children said that they use the Internet either everyday or almost every day.

However, 2010 data shows that they used to be online only one or two days per week. Professor Kürşat Çağıltay of Middle East Technical University's Department of Computing and Teaching Technologies in the Faculty of Education said at the symposium that similar cases are seen in European countries like the Netherlands, where 78 percent of preschool-age children are online. Likewise, in Norway, 58 percent of the 0-6 age group is online. Çağıltay said families' daily Internet use for entertainment purposes should be between one to two hours. He also suggested to place TVs or PCs in spaces other than bedrooms and advised families to monitor their children.