Less than a third of parents believe that the benefits of their child using social media outweigh the risks.
Data collected as part of Ofcom’s 2024 children’s media literacy report showed only 27% of parents asked felt that child’s use of social media and video-sharing and messaging platforms was more of a positive than a negative.
The report indicated that parents’ primary concern was their child being exposed to content that is inappropriate for their age group.
Londoner Violet Barnes – mother of George, 11 and Lucy, 13 – agrees with the findings.
She said: “My worry is that you just don’t know what the kids are going to see.
“You can’t be looking over their shoulder every minute of every day, making sure they’re not watching something they shouldn’t be.
“Platforms like TikTok and YouTube just spit out the most random videos, and not all of them are age appropriate. Some of the stuff I’ve seen the kids watching is really quite intense.
“I know these platforms do have age restriction settings, but that in itself is a bit of a minefield as a lot of stuff slips through the cracks.
“I don’t want to deprive them of these platforms completely, as some of the content they see can be quite good – but I also don’t want to give them unrestricted access to whatever’s out there.”
The report also revealed that a third of 8-17-year-olds had seen potentially harmful content online in the previous year.
Of the children asked, 32% reported being exposed to something “worrying or nasty” online in the previous 12 months, with the likelihood of seeing this kind of content increasing with age: 34% of 12-17s reported seeing this kind of content compared with 28% of 8–11-year-olds.
Within the same time frame, only a fifth of parents said their child told them they had seen something upsetting.
Barnes said she has had the same experience with her children, and worries that they aren’t always able to tell when content is potentially harmful.
She added: “I’m not sure my kids would always come to me if they had seen something that upset them. I think it’s a pride thing, coupled with the fact they don’t want me to take their phones away altogether.
“It’s also not always obvious to them that what they’re watching is nasty – some stuff is pretty obvious, but some videos can be more subtle but still pretty horrible in terms of their message.”
Other online activities posed less of a worry to parents, with those asked seeing more benefit to other forms of online use such as gaming and gathering information online.
More than half of parents (54%) believed that gathering information online was more beneficial than detrimental, with 17% feeling the opposite and 29% neither agreeing or disagreeing.
Views on gaming were more divisive, with four in ten parents feeling the positives outweighed the negatives, 36% feeling the opposite and 24% saying they weren’t sure.
Barnes feels that both activities come with inherent risk, but the potential for exposure to harmful material is greatly reduced.
She said: “Both my kids game, and they really enjoy it. I only give them a certain amount of time per day, and they mostly just chat to friends when they’re online – I don’t see any harm in that.
“Researching stuff online is a really useful life skill, and is only going to become more useful. I see it as a must.
“Of course, there’s potential to come across either upsetting or misleading content, but I think the ability to distinguish between what’s trustworthy and what’s not is really important in today’s age.”
Many schools are modifying their curriculums to incorporate more robust e-safety procedures, but Barnes feels more can be done in certain areas.
She said: “I’d like to see schools teach kids more about fake information, and information presented as fact that is actually opinion.
“They’re very impressionable and will often believe something that is presented in a certain way. But I’d like them to be able to tell what is accurate and what is just someone’s point of view.”
Join the discussion