Knowledge Sharing in Peer Group: An Alternative of Internet Literacy Education Media for Children

Abstract

The data of the Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association in 2018 mentioned that children and teenagers aged 15-19 years old are the majority internet users in Indonesia. The first time the children access to the internet is also getting earlier from year to year. In that context, parents’ role to guide and protect their children from the online risk is getting stronger. The problem is that the parents’ internet literacy level is often lower than the children. Such a condition then push the children to search other source of information when having difficulties in accessing to the internet. The previous research mentioned that elder brothers or sisters and friends often become the reference for children related to the digital media usage. Departed from this condition, the research is conducted to explore the opportunity of utilizing peer group in literacy internet education for children. This research has been conducted in eight months involving 40 students of SMPN 2 and 40 students of SMP Al Irsyad Purwokerto as respondents. The data are collected via the survey, FGD, and indepth interview. Data analysis is conducted using descriptive and interactive analysis. The result of research shows that 61.4% of respondents admit that they prefer to choose their friends to ask and to do the knowledge sharing when having difficulties in accessing to the internet. Some reasons appearing are because the parents’ technical skill are lower than the children’s, uncommunicative talk with parents, high level of parents’ busy activities, and children’s need to socialize with their friends as amusement especially in the middle of pandemic