“You can see anything on the Internet, you can do anything on the Internet!”: Young Canadians Talk about the Internet

This paper presents emerging findings based on 35 semi-structured interviews conducted with children and youth from the research project Children, Young People, and New Media in the Home. The objective of this research is to examine young people’s use of the Internet by focusing on the overall media environment at home. Our study indicates that while children and young people are active and intrepid Internet surfers, they use the Internet to extend their local and school-based social ties, and that they have very little concern for offensive or illegal content issues. We argue that these experiences of children and young people need to be considered an intrinsic facet of Canadian Internet policy development treating children and young people as valid and active citizens.