A window into young children’s online worlds
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- Children aged 5 to 7 increasingly present online – a third use social media unsupervised, and a growing number have personal profiles
- Three-quarters of parents talk to younger children about staying safe online
- Ofcom signals plans to develop additional proposals on how AI can be used to detect illegal content and harms to children
Infant school children are increasingly online and given more digital independence by parents, according to Ofcom’s annual study of children’s relationship with the media and online worlds.
Around a quarter of 5- to 7 year-olds – 24 % – now own a smartphone, while three-quarters use a tablet (76%).
Compared to a year ago, a higher proportion of 5–7s go online to send messages or make voice/video calls (59% to 65%) or to watch live-streamed content (39% to 50%).
Similarly, overall use of social media sites or apps among all 5–7s has increased year-on-year (30% to 38%), with WhatsApp (29% to 37%), TikTok (25% to 30%), Instagram (14% to 22%) and Discord (2%...
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