Growing Up in a Connected World

How can we best advance children’s rights in the digital age? The starting point must be children themselves – asking about the barriers they face in accessing the internet, the opportunities they are discovering online, the digital skills they are acquiring and the risks of harm that they face.

The Global Kids Online network is committed to gathering the necessary evidence by listening to children and generating cross-nationally comparable and robust data that directly reflects children’s voices, experiences and concerns.

The findings presented here are based on survey results from more than 14,000 internet-using children across 11 countries. Given that our sample consists only of internet users, it is important to consider that internet access across the countries analysed in this report vary considerably; in some countries most children have internet access while in others they do not. We therefore cannot use these data to make inferences about the general child population in a given country.

Download Summary Report

At the global level, it is estimated that one child in three is an internet user, and that one in three internet users is a child under 18 years of age.

Among the children we talked to, mobile phones are the most popular devices used to go online. This represents a notable shift over the past decade. In Europe and North America, the first generation of internet users logged on via desktop computers, but the pattern in the global South has clearly been mobile first.

“The phone is somehow simpler. We can carry it anywhere, it’s smaller and it’s easier to work on it. I like it better in this way [using it] by fingers and not with the keyboard.”

- Girl, 12, Serbia

Among the many activities available online, we found that watching videos clips was the most popular for both girls and boys, with over three quarters of internet-using children watching online videos at least weekly, either alone or with family and friends.

“When my mother bought the laptop, we started to spend more time together, since every weekend we chose a movie and watched it with my grandmother.”

- Girl, 15, Uruguay

Despite concerns about children’s consumption of online entertainment, we found that mainstream entertainment activities may be useful entry-level opportunities for children to develop the interest and skills needed to progress towards more educational, social, and civic online experiences.

Base: Children aged 9–17 who use the internet.

Note: Argentina has missing data and is therefore not included in this figure.

Figure: Ladder of online participation

Download Summary Report

Download Full Comparative Report

Much like in their “offline” lives, children can be exposed to several online risks that could lead to harm. For example, they may be confronted with hate speech or encounter violent or sexual content. Across the 11 countries included in our report, fewer than one-third of children reported experiencing each respective risk measured in our survey.

Our findings show that children who engage in more online activities tend to experience more online risks – perhaps due to their heightened exposure or their more confident exploration of the internet. This poses a dilemma; on one hand, we found that participating in more online activities improves children’s digital skills. However, this also leaves them more exposed to risky – and potentially harmful – content, contact and conduct.

To effectively protect children without unduly limiting their opportunities, it is important to understand how a risk can translate into harm – and to know which children are most vulnerable to experiencing harm online. In several countries, many children have experienced a variety of online risks, but far fewer report feeling harmed as a result.

Providing children with guidance as they navigate the digital space is one way to prevent online risks resulting in harm. In most countries surveyed, over 90 per cent of internet-using children access the internet from home weekly, meaning that parents are in a strong position to support children’s internet use.

But faced with complex and fast-evolving technologies, many parents do not feel confident enough to supervise their seemingly tech-savvy children. Parents may also be influenced by popular worries about ‘excessive screen-time’, ‘internet addiction’ and ‘stranger danger’. The temptation is therefore to restrict children’s internet use rather than to guide them to use the internet safely.

Listen to our podcast on the screen time debate

Instead of limiting internet use, parents can get involved in children’s online lives by encouraging them to learn from the internet or suggesting ways to use the internet safely. By taking a more positive and supportive stance, parents can help their children develop resilience while also reducing conflict between parent and child. In most of the 11 countries surveyed, such enabling mediation helps children to engage in a wider range of online activities and slightly reduces their exposure to risk.

Very few children in any of the countries surveyed seek support from their teachers when they experience something hurtful online. Yet school is an important place where children frequently go online, placing teachers in a good position to provide support, particularly in teaching children how to stay safe online and how to critically evaluate the information they find online. This, however, requires that teachers themselves are supported to build the necessary skills to be the guides that children need – which could be a focus for future education policy and programmes.

Download Summary Report

Download Full Comparative Report