Our Children’s Online Experiences report contains a wealth of findings about what children do when they’re online, and how they feel about their online activities and the content they encounter.
We’ve captured some of them here. For more detail, take a look at the research reports and data behind the report in full, including: Children and Parents Media Use and Attitudes, Children’s Media Lives, Children’s Online Safety Tracker, and Children’s Passive Online Measurement.
Children are using devices younger than ever
A majority of children under the age of two already use screens, and 65% of parents of children aged 6 months to 2 years say that their child goes online. When asked whether their child ever looks at a screen, the vast majority (85%) of parents say that they do. Ownership of smartphones increases as children get older, and rises sharply from 56% of 10-year-olds to 83% of 11-year-olds, underlying how starting senior school is the tipping point for many children getting their hands on their first smartphone.
As with phone ownership, time spent online rises steeply with age. Children aged 8–14 spend an average of one day a week online, but this rises to two days a week for 15 to 17-year-olds.