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CyberSafeKids 6th Annual Report has been released!

Despite the challenges of 2021 and the global pandemic, we have produced a detailed overview of the data we collected from children in academic year 2020-21 in our annual report.

The report highlights our observations on trends, risks and opportunities, as well as recommendations for a safer and smarter online world for children and young people.

Some of the key figures being released are:

  • 93% of 8 – 12 year olds owned their own smart device. Boys were significantly more likely to own a gaming console than girls (73% vs. 26%)
  • 84% of 8 – 12 year olds had their own social media and/or instant messaging account.
  • YouTube was the most popular app (74%) followed by TikTok (47%),
    WhatsApp(39%) and Snapchat (37%). If they are posting videos of themselves online however, children are more likely to do so on TikTok (80%) or Snapchat (30%) than YouTube (16%).
  • 28% of children with social media or instant messaging accounts had friends or followers they didn’t know offline.
  • 17% of childrenreported playing over-18s games with boys (29%) much more likely to do so than girls (7%).
  • 36% of children game online with people they don’t know offline (41% of boys vs. 31% of girls). 20% increase on last year. 61% said they had been contacted by a stranger in an online game either ‘lots of times’ (18%) or ‘A few times’ (43%).
  • A quarter of kids (25%) have seen or experienced something online in the last year that bothered them. Almost a 3rd of those children (30%) kept it to themselves rather than report it to their parents or someone else.
  • 29% of children have experienced bullying online with being kept out of messaging groups (15%) being the most reportedexperience followed by being sent hurtful messages online (14%). Over a quarter of those children (29%) did not tell anyone about it but kept it to themselves.
  • Most children (77%) are speaking to parents or carers about what they are seeing and doing online with some regularity but 10% never do and 2% only once a year.
  • In terms of rules for going online, most children reported having some rules in place but 13% reported that there were ‘no rules’ and 30% said they could go online ‘whenever I want’.
  • Almost 80% of teachers (79%) told us that online safety was a significant issue in their school.
  • The majority (61%), had dealt with at least one incident over the last school year: 21% dealt with one incident and 32% dealt with 2 – 5 incidents (slightly up on last year when it was 30%). A minority of teachers (9%) dealt with more than 5 in the course of the school year. This figure (those dealing with more than 5 incidents) is a significant increase on last year, which was only 3%.

See the full report here.

For further information or media interviews with Alex Cooney (CEO) or Philip Arneill (HEI) please contact: Alex Cooney, Chief Executive, CyberSafeIreland, [email protected], 086 447 9328 or (01) 582 5421

Posted on:

Sep 6, 2021

Edel