The British data protection authority (ICO) has published new research highlighting a growing gap between parents' trust and their children's digital reality.

A survey conducted with over 4,000 children and parents reveals that more than one-third (36%) of children interact online with people they only know through this means. More than half of the children (52%) would try to bypass age verifications, this figure rising to 64% when parents have already helped them, which nearly one-third (31%) of parents admit to having done. Moreover, although 91% of parents use monitoring tools, 41% of children have tried to bypass them, nearly half of whom (49%) succeed easily. Qualitative interviews confirm that many parents feel overwhelmed and that location sharing is perceived as a "digital umbilical cord".

At the same time, the ICO presented an update to its strategy for children, highlighting that its regulatory actions have led to concrete changes. Since April 2024, improvements made to several platforms have helped protect nearly five million minor users. The authority notably obtained commitments from Snapchat to strengthen age verification and improvements to the interactive map features of Snapchat and Instagram for better understanding of location sharing. Collaboration with 28 educational technology providers also resulted in the implementation of 98% of the 596 recommendations issued.