In 2000, the Media Awareness Network began an ambitious research program to explore how Canadian children and young people are using the Internet. The program, called Young Canadians In A Wired World, was funded by the Government of Canada.

Phase I of the research took place in three steps, starting with a survey of parents, followed by focus groups with parents and children, and finishing with a Canada-wide survey of students.

The parent survey, Canada’s Children In A Wired World: The Parents’ View, was conducted in March 2000 by means of half-hour telephone interviews with 1081 randomly selected adults who owned a computer, and had a child between 6 and 16 years of age.

Focus group research took place, in French and in English, in Montreal and Toronto in the summer of 2000 with four groups of children 9 to 16 years of age in each city and four groups of parents, two in each city. The purpose of the focus testing was to explore and identify key issues to be included in a subsequent nationwide survey of Canadian students.

The student survey, Young Canadians In A Wired World: The Students’ View, was carried out in March 2001. In this study, 5,682 students from across Canada completed a 100-question questionnaire on how they use the Internet. The survey explored what young people do online, how they perceive the Internet and what they know about it. The questions also focused on areas of risk such as private and adult-only chat rooms, meeting Internet friends in person, exposure to sexually-explicit and hateful material and sharing personal information. The findings from this survey provide an interesting comparison to data collected previously from Canadian parents.

Data collection and analysis was carried out by the Toronto-based Environics Research Group.