Mobile app usage of children in the United Kingdom - statistics & facts
Kids and apps: mix under parental supervision
While children might use their smartphone devices to practice a foreign language, research topics online for their school projects, or simply keeping up with their peers, the most used mobile apps and websites for UK kids are used for entertainment. As of the end of 2022, 88 percent of UK children and teens reported engaging with social video platform YouTube, while 53 percent reported using TikTok. Snapchat was used by 46 percent of respondents, while Instagram was used by around 40 percent of young users aged between three and 17 years of age. Online calling and video conferencing app Zoom was the most used communication platform among UK kids, while Discord was used by around 27 percent of young users, and Meta-powered WhatsApp was used by around 21 percent of UK kids.In the last years, parental apps and software have become more common among UK parents. According to a survey of parents carried out between October and November 2022, 27 percent of parents reported using parental control software set up on one specific connected device, while 13 percent reported installing apps on their children’s phone to monitor which apps they used and for how long. More than half of parents in the UK have rules over who their children can contact online, as well as rules about not bringing the phone into bed with them or rules over which apps can be downloaded to their devices. Limiting interactions with strangers online, blocking access to restricted content, and limiting time online are only some of the many tasks that the around 50 parental support apps available to UK users in the Google Play Store can help parents with.
Mobile privacy for kids
According to a study conducted on 400 mobile apps hosted on the Google Play Store as of February 2023, almost half of the examined mobile apps had no child-specific user policy but collected some form of personal identifiers, while 18 percent of the apps were reported to collect data without the parental permission or right protocols. Around 70 percent of the examined apps were reported collecting persistent identifiers, such as the user IP address, while 14 percent reported to collect the user’s name.In April 2023, TikTok was fined for over 14.5 million euros, taking the rank of the third most expensive General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) violation fine in the United Kingdom (UK), only surpassed by fines issued to the Marriot International and the British Airways in October 2020. The popular short-video app – which is officially only available for users aged 13 years and older – was fined for breaching children’s privacy under the European GDPR. In October of 2023, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) raised concerns towards Snapchat’s “My AI” feature for privacy risks associated with its new AI feature launched in May 2023.