More than 1.6 million social media accounts owned by children are falsely registered with an adult age, a survey by the advertising regulator suggests. Some 93% of young people aged 11 to 17 say they have an account with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter or YouTube, with a quarter (24%) misreporting their age when doing so, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found.
At least 11% of the accounts are registered by children falsely claiming they are 18 or over, the poll suggests. Through these accounts, children were exposed to almost two thirds more age-restricted ads than under 17s who set up their profiles with their actual age.
Children are signing up to social media at an increasingly young age, the study found. Some 67% of accounts held by 11 to 12 year olds – younger than the minimum age of registration – were set up between school years one and seven, whereas just 21% of the accounts held by 13 to 17 year olds were set up in the same period. Some 75% of accounts were set up by a child without a parent or guardian’s supervision, while 94% of those who access social media do so through devices only they use.
