1.3 Children’s use of technology
🎯 How are children using technology, and to what extent?
The online environment evolves quickly, and new technology is constantly being developed. This has significant consequences on children’s lives.
Research shows that:
- One in three online users among the global online population is a child under the age of 18. In the Global North, children make up 1 in 10 users, but in other countries, this number rises to almost half of the online population.
- Children’s most popular device for accessing the internet is the mobile phone, and in many cases, this is often the only way children access the internet.
- In some regions, children access the internet daily.
- Children and young people are increasingly using instant messengers and wearable technology, whereas social networking sites (such as Facebook) are slowly giving way to YouTube and newer apps such as Instagram and TikTok, used primarily for watching videos (Figure 1).
Source: Barnardo’s Generation Digital report (2019)
📚 Resources
There are multiple studies on how children around the world and in different regions are accessing and using the internet. These include:
– The Global Kids Online comparative report (2019), published by UNICEF Innocenti, the organisation’s Office of Research. Global Kids Online is a multi-country programme coordinated by UNICEF Innocenti which studies the opportunities and risks that children from around the world may encounter in the online world.
– The EU Kids Online report (2020), published by the EU Kids Online project, which tracks how European young adults aged 9 to 16 are accessing and using the internet.
– Statistics collected by the security company Kaspersky (2019-2020), which include trends about the content children access.
💡 Reflection point
The way children use technology and the internet informs policymaking processes and mobilises stakeholders to act. Does any research exist on the way children in your country or region use the internet? If yes, what do the trends show? If not, why do you think this is lacking?