A quarter of parents worry their children have an unhealthy relationship with the internet, a new study has found.
A Mozilla and YouGov report surveyed nearly 4,000 parents in the US and Europe, examining children’s Internet usage habits and parental controls in place by families.
It follows recent changes to the UK Online Safety Act which include AI measures to verify the age of visitors to websites with adult content. Ofcom (opens in new tab) recently found that a third of children gain access to such content by lying about their age.
usage habits
In terms of usage, 15% of UK children spent up to 10 hours a day online, three quarters of them playing games and watching videos. 52% spent between 2 and 4 hours online every day.
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The average age for British children to start using the internet is six, but 40% of parents are introducing it by the age of five. In Germany and France the average age is higher – seven and eight respectively.
Despite this, many UK parents are not confident that their child can protect themselves online, and 64% have parental controls in place to restrict content. Additionally, 71% of them are concerned about the type of content their children might see and 31% say the internet is unsafe overall.
Parents’ top concerns are inappropriate content (71%), online predators (53%) and cyberbullying (46%). The latter is higher in those with children between the ages of 10 and 13.
54% of UK parents were concerned about their children’s data tracking, which is lower compared to respondents from other countries. However, a huge 94% of British parents did not believe that Big Tech has their children’s interests in mind when developing products.
“The Online Safety Bill is a good first step in tackling harmful misinformation, but it needs to be done in a meaningful way by increasing scrutiny of content moderation decisions and holding social media companies accountable,” said Kushall Amlani, Global Competition and Regulatory Advocate for Mozilla.
- Concerned about your child’s online safety? Protect them with the best free parental control app
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