Online safety awareness of elementary school students from Croatian rural and urban areas

Objective: To examine the factors related to the use of in-ternet and the awareness of online safety among students from one elementary school in a village and one in a city.Participants and methods: Participants in the research (n=119) were first to fourth graders attending “Braća Ribar” Elementary School in the village of Posedarje (n=53), and “Šimun Kožičić Benja” Elementary School in the city of Zadar (n=66). An 18-item questionnaire in Croatian was cre-ated and distributed among participants.Results: Six (11.3%) students attending school in the village and 16 (24.2%) students attending school in the city were not sufficiently informed about what the Internet is and what purposes it serves. Students from urban area were bet-ter informed about the concept of personal data compared with students from rural area (71,2% vs. 47.2%, P=0.038). There was no statistically significant difference with regard to other aspects of online safety. Conclusion: Elementary school students from rural and ur-ban areas know what the Internet is and frequently use dif-ferent Internet applications. However, they still lack aware-ness and proper understanding of online safety. Results from this study highlight the need for an appropriate edu-cational intervention.