The survey found 71 percent of people are extremely or very concerned about children accessing harmful content online. Photo: RNZ
Most New Zealanders feel concerned about the safety of children online, according to a new survey.
Inappropriate content and misinformation top the list of worries from Internet NZ's latest survey.
A gradual decline in New Zealanders' opinions on the web is revealed in the results.
In 2019, a whopping 90 percent of New Zealanders thought the internet's positives outweighed its negatives, but that was down to 76 percent in the latest data collected in 2024.
"At the beginning of the survey (nine years ago) over 90 percent of us were really excited about the internet and what it offered," Internet NZ chief executive Vivien Maidaborn said.
"Now we're aware there are more harms, the potential of cybercrime, issues of algorithms and who they include and who they exclude, and there's whole misinformation and disinformation thing."
Though New Zealanders' opinions of the internet as a whole were shifting, the safety of children remained the top concern, according to the survey of 1001 people.
"That's always been the case that this was our highest concern... 71 percent are extremely or very concerned about children accessing harmful content online," Maidaborn said.
"The internet has opened up the potential for children being sent or coming across unwanted or inappropriate sexual content online and that's really worrying for people."
She said New Zealand's laws still had not caught up with the internet age.
"One of the things as a country we haven't done very well yet is translate our law that was developed for an offline space and how we apply it in an online space," she said.
"We need to come to grips with it, and New Zealand government's have not been fast. In fact in the AI space we're 40th in the OECD for preparedness for AI. We don't seem to be prioritising the guidelines, policies and regulation."
Respondents had a generally poor opinion of AI, with just 10 percent expressing more excitement than concern about the emerging technology.
Sixty-eight percent said they were worried about potential malicious use of AI.
Misinformation was another top issue, with 61 percent expressing significant concern and another 26 being somewhat concerned.
"Social media fact-checking has now become less of a priority for platforms," Maidaborn noted.
"We can see that on X (formerly Twitter) and the Meta platforms like Facebook, they've all stopped fact-checking which makes the responsibility down to each individual."
She said the government needed to be more engaged in policy to address mis- and dis-information.
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