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By Tony Hallett, 26 January 2006 13:05

NEWS

Terrorism, couch potato children and online porn top a list of important internet-related issues.

A poll of more than a thousand Britons from AOL UK asked 'How important an issue for society, if at all, are the following?', with a score given from 1 to 100 (100 being the highest ranking possible).

The full top 10 reads:

1. Internet being used by terrorist networks to facilitate their activities (79)
2. Internet taking children away from active pastimes (75)
3. The boom in online pornography (72)
4= Internet helping charities raise funds faster (69)
4= Internet giving greater freedom of speech for countries with state censorship (69)
6. Some countries trying to curb freedom of speech through the internet (66)
7. Internet helping ordinary citizens to express opposition to government and business in ways that were not possible before (62)
8. Unequal access to the internet growing the divide between developed and undeveloped nations (60)
9. People becoming addicted to the internet (61)
10. Piracy of copyrighted materials (59)

The online giant commissioned Ipsos MORI to conduct 1,032 one-to-one interviews last December. The study is part of a wider marketing campaign that AOL is currently running entitled 'aol/discuss'.

One ad features archive footage of a student protester in Tiananmen Square in Beijing and coincides with news that AOL competitor Google - like other portals MSN and Yahoo! - is entering the Chinese market.

The survey also asked participants to look forward; questions on how they would like the internet to develop showed "a telling and altruistic vision of what the British public want", according to an AOL statement.

The top two wishes were:

1. The internet will increasingly become a public library accessible to everyone (54)
2. The internet will make it possible to share knowledge with the developing world and raise standards of health across the world (42).

AOL was a major media partner of the Live 8 concerts and campaign last year.

Timothy Ryan, AOL UK director of brand marketing, said in a statement: "We have seen massive focus on price and speed in this market but not on some of the serious issues raised by the internet."