Digital parenting

While acknowledging they need to be supported in this role, parents see themselves as primarily responsible for helping children to have positive experiences online, regardless of their child’s age. This gets harder as children get older and become more digitally aware and potentially more knowledgeable than parents themselves. As children exert their digital independence and parental controls slip away, parents still try to maintain conversations about their child’s digital life, but say they need assistance to do this effectively.

Six in ten parents feel they have a good balance of using digital devices in their home. In households where this is the case, parents feel more confident and knowledgeable about online safety issues and are also more confident that their child knows how to stay safe online. Parents and children are more likely to be teaching each other digital skills and parents feel that their child’s use of technology and the internet has a positive impact on their overall wellbeing.

Conversely, in households where time is often spent alone on devices rather than doing things together and where children say that their parents go on their phone when they are trying to talk to them, our Index shows there is a strong negative impact on children’s wellbeing. It is in these households that parents are less likely to feel they are mainly responsible for their children having positive experiences online.

A wide range of controls are used by parents to manage children’s online activities, with discussion and clear rule setting used to a greater extent than the setting of physical limits or controls. Parents who lack confidence in using tools and controls are less able to support their children in issues of online safety and are more likely to feel that technology has a negative impact on their children’s wellbeing.

The number of controls put in place by parents to manage their child’s online activity is not a strong indicator of digital wellbeing outcomes; it is more important that children feel that their parents are engaged with what they do online and talk to them about their experiences.

Parents see many challenges in keeping up with technology and their children’s online lives, and are looking for a range of support, including more information from schools, the apps and platforms their children use and from the government. These needs are less directly acknowledged within families where parents lack digital skills or have a poor digital balance in the home, where their priorities may be different – but just where it appears this support for children’s digital wellbeing is most needed.