Parental Concern Over Youth Online Spending: Level of Concern and Demographic Variations by Gender

About this data

Ofcom's June 2025 research into persuasive design features and the potential financial harm to children evaluates the implementation of parental controls and monitoring mechanisms for children's online spending, broken down by gender and age bracket. Overall, 84% of parents reported having implemented at least one method of parental control or monitoring to supervise their child's online spending. However, adoption rates vary according to child gender and age. Parents of boys report higher overall rates of spending supervision (86%) than parents of girls (81%). Age and gender dynamics: parental control adoption follows an inverted U-curve as children mature, peaking during middle childhood before declining sharply in late adolescence: - Ages 8–9: high levels of supervision are reported for both boys (91%) and girls (87%). - Ages 10–12 (peak oversight): monitoring reaches its maximum prevalence, with 93% of parents of boys and 91% of parents of girls enforcing spending controls. - Ages 13–15: supervision begins to drop, maintaining a gender gap (88% for boys versus 80% for girls). - Ages 16–17: control measures decrease significantly for older teenagers, falling to 65% for boys and 58% for girls.