"Children on the Internet"- the first report on monitoring children's activity on the web

These are just some of the data provided by the "Children on the Internet" report, which launches an initiative to monitor the presence of children and young people on the internet. The report's conclusions are alarming, as the platforms in question are aimed at people over the age of 13 or even 18. The situation calls for urgent intervention.

Of the social media platforms regularly used by children aged 7-12, Tik Tok is the most popular - the youngest users start it several times a day and spend the most time on it. They use Facebook and Instagram less. Among instant messaging services, Messenger and Whatsapp have the most users.

Selected data from the report:

Age group 7 to 12 years old:

• Social media platforms and instant messaging services that are allowed for ages 13 and over are actively used by well over half of this age group - as many as 1.4 million children (58%).
• Every third child (760 thousand) (32%) has regular access to the TikTok platform, 24% (580 thousand) to Facebook and 12% (290 thousand) to Instagram.
• Children commonly use instant messaging: 38% use Messenger (900,000) and 31% use Whatsapp (720,000).
• They use TikTok most intensively - active users of this platform spend an average of 2 hours and 11 minutes a day on the application, in most cases launching it a dozen or more times a day. It is estimated that over 300 thousand children spend more than two hours a day on this platform.

Age group 7 to 14 years old:

• 85% of them use the Internet (2.7 million).
• Of these, 96% (2.6 million) connect to the web via mobile devices.
• They most often use social and streaming platforms.
• They spend over 2 hours a day on social media, and nearly 2 hours on streaming platforms.
• The most popular subject categories are: culture and entertainment, education and eroticism.
• Entertainment - mainly games and music - is used by 95% of internet users in this group, a similar percentage visited educational content, while erotic content was visited by 51%.
• When accessing erotic services, they most often use mobile devices.

"Children on the Internet" is a report that makes it possible to discuss the way children consume digital content not through the prism of guesswork and intuition, but through facts. Researchers from Gemius, Polish Internet Research and the University of Warsaw - Jadwiga Przewłocka and Aleksandra Załęska and Dr Anna Miotk - presented data showing how the youngest use the net. Magdalena Bigaj, Konrad Ciesiołkiewicz, Krzysztof Mikulski and Monika Rosa describe the consequences of the presence of children and young people on the Internet and a series of recommendations and directions for urgent intervention. The aim of the publication is to stimulate concrete action by market regulators and institutions to protect children and young people from violence, abuse and all forms of objectification - sexual and commercial.

The initiative is organised by the State Commission for Combating Sexual Exploitation of Minors Under 15 (PKDP), the Institute of Digital Citizenship Foundation, Polish Internet Research and Gemius. The report is sponsored by the Sejm of the Republic of Poland and the Faculty of Journalism, Information and Bibliology of the University of Warsaw.

What do the authors of the "Children on the Internet" report say about the initiative?

This report provides irrefutable evidence that from now on no one can claim that "there are no children on social media," comments Magdalena Bigaj, President of the Institute of Digital Citizenship Foundation: This publication launches an initiative to constantly monitor the presence of children and young people on the Internet and will be a litmus test for the social responsibility of companies, institutions and each of us. We will report this data on a regular basis, which will allow us to verify the effectiveness of measures to protect children and young people.

Dr Konrad Ciesiołkiewicz, a member of the National Commission for Combating Sexual Exploitation of Minors Under 15, stresses that the high probability of a child being harmed or otherwise abused on the Internet, the lack of adequate protective measures on the part of content and digital service providers, but also the advertising and marketing industry, allows us to consider this situation as institutional violence. It requires extraordinary measures to ensure safe and friendly conditions for the life and development of minors, which are almost 1/5 of us.

I would like our data to serve as a reflection, so that real action can finally be taken to intelligently design, regulate and enforce the rules for children's access to online services and applications. So that the youngest users of the network are safe, protected and can benefit from the good things that the internet brings to their educational, social and civic development. - adds Krzysztof Mikulski, President of the Polish Internet Research.

This is an important initiative that has a chance of being translated into real action. I believe that caring for the safety of young people in the digital world is not only a social responsibility today, but also an obligation for any company operating in the media and new technologies industry. As active participants in this ecosystem, we have an influence on the reality in which our children will grow up, and since this is the case, we are obliged to strive to make the "children's internet" a better, safer place - concludes Marcin Pery, President of Gemius.