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Adults must impose the necessary checks and balances to keep children safe online, says the children's commissioner for Wales.

"All children and young people don't seem much of a distinction between their online and offline lives,"

Mr Towler told BBC Radio Wales. "It's all just one thing and they get really excited by the opportunities the internet affords and sometimes parents get a little scared about that and worried about what their children are accessing." 'Crossing the road' Continue reading the main story “Start Quote They're all running around with handheld computers these days, they're not just on phones ” End Quote Keith Towler Children's commissioner Mr Towler said he talks to children in lots of different settings and they "still enjoy playing outside as much as they ever did". He said we need to recognise that the internet provides fantastic opportunities for education and learning and its making sure that children access that safely. He said that was a real challenge for parents and carers. "It's a bit like crossing the road, you try to teach your children the best way of crossing the road well. We need to teach our children the best way of using this fantastic resource. "I think too many parents are very very scared of the internet and because they're so scared they will say 'Oh I don't understand it'". Handheld computers The commissioner also praised Hwb, the virtual learning environment, which he said provides protection for children using the web in schools. Mr Towler said: "We've got to get parents and carers to recognise that children do operate in the digital world. They're all running around with handheld computers these days, they're not just on phones. "They can access whatever they want whenever they want and parents need to engage on that. " "We need to remember that children and young people are much more savvy than sometimes we think they are, and they are much more responsible than sometimes adults think they are so its not all doom and gloom. "What we need to do is put the right checks and balances in place and what children always want from parents and carers is to understand what the boundaries are, and that's our job to do that." Sangeet Bhullar, executive director of Wise Kids, added that the digital landscape was "evolving rapidly" and up-to-date data was needed on how children and young people in Wales related to it. More on This Story .related-links-list li { position: relative; } .related-links-list .gvl3-icon { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; } Related Stories Web safety lessons urged for infants 05 FEBRUARY 2013, EDUCATION &amp; FAMILY Online chat 'should be monitored' 22 JANUARY 2013, TECHNOLOGY Body to promote digital teaching 22 JUNE 2012, WALES $render("page-see-also","ID"); $render("page-newstracker","ID"); Related Internet links Children's Commissioner for Wales The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites $render("page-related-items","ID"); Share this pageShare this pageShareFacebookTwitter Email Print In association with $render("advert","advert-sponsor-module","page-bookmark-links"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); $render("advert-post-script-load"); More Wales stories RSS Army base shuts in defence shake-up An Army base in Pembrokeshire is to close with 600 troops transferred to St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan. Soldiers' conman jailed three years Wales recall Warburton and Jones <!--

Google told to fix privacy policy by EU data regulators

consolidate 60 separate privacy policies into a single agreement.

Google has been told it should give clearer information about what data is being collected and for what purpose. It has also been told to give users more control over how the information is combined.

How social networks have changed our world

Five-year-old runs up £1,700 iPad bill in ten minutes

"Danny was pestering us to let him have a go on the iPad. He kept saying it was a free game so my husband put in the passcode and handed it to him.

"He was crying, as the rest of the children were telling him we could have bought a house with the amount he had spent.

: A gene that seems to be (very modestly) correlated with internet addiction also plays a role in nicotine addiction.

A gene that seems to be (very modestly) correlated with internet addiction also plays a role in nicotine addiction.

internet addiction is not a figment of our imagination

We want to show the world that we are innovators. We want to show the world that cloud storage has a right to exist. And, of course, when you launch something like this, you can expect some controversy. The content industry is going to react really emotionally about this. The US government will probably try and destroy the new business … you've got to stand up against that, and fight that, and I'm doing that … I will not allow them to chill me."

Megaupload was created initially as a service that allows you to send large files because email attachments had limitations … and that's still the case today. The popularity and initial growth was all around that. This was never set up with the intent to be some kind of piracy haven. If the US government says that we are a mega-conspiracy, a mafia that has created this kind of thing to be a criminal network of pirates, they're completely wrong … for them it was about shutting it down and dealing with it later on the fly. They are hacking the legal system."

In the popular consciousness, the Internet was simultaneously a place of possibility and danger. In 1993, Time magazine warned, "People who use … the Net may be in for a shock.… Anybody can start a discussion on any topic and say anything." It was precisely this structural independence that transformed the Internet from a mere tool for information-sharing to the world's open forum.

The rise of self-publishing tools like Blogger transformed the "third space" of cyberspace into a modern speaker's corner, offering any motivated writer a platform for his or her political views. Initially, this online free expression was often marginalized or dismissed -- the term "blogosphere" was originally a joke. But bloggers kept plugging away. In liberal democracies their free expression was guaranteed, and in closed societies connectivity was often too limited to draw any real attention.