CHILDWISE Special Report - Digital Lives 2010

This report explores the ways in which children behave online, and their attitudes and expectations, to provide a detailed picture of children’s lives. The report combines statistical data and qualitative exploration, to give an up-to-the minute guide to children’s behaviour

Key highlights:

• More than 90% of UK children use the internet, with the average child doing so more than five times a week, and spending two hours a day online. Access is increasingly in their own room, on their own laptop, and a growing number now use mobile phones or games consoles to go online
• Social gaming sites are attracting children to take part in their safe interactive world, providing a springboard for the step up to social networking around age 11. Children flout the rules about minimum age limits, and their parents condone or actively encourage this. Parents and children have expectations about standards of protection and probity from major online brands, mirroring their real life experiences, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for such sites to avoid responsibility towards their younger users
• Parents’ formal control of online behaviour is ever more challenging - what can media owners, educators and legislators do to make their online experience safer?
• How can organisations take advantage of children’s online behaviour, to interact with them in a way that ensures long term engagement and trust?
• Music, games, social networking, entertainment, education, purchasing - what matters to children across the age range and between boys and girls?
• What are the changes that take place in children’s online behaviour as they grow, and when do the critical step changes occur?