Parents and children urged to take 24-hour ‘cyberbreak’ from 5pm today

Parents are being urged to help children to limit their time spent online as new research shows many young people feel they spend too much time on devices and find it hard to switch off.

More than two-thirds (67 per cent) of secondary school-aged students and half (51 per cent) of primary school-aged pupils feel that they spend too much time online, the survey by online safety charity CyberSafeKids found.

It coincides with the organisation’s annual “cyberbreak” from 5pm on Friday, October 20th to 5pm on Saturday, October 21st, 2023.

It is aimed at promoting the need for a “happy and healthy balance” of online use by encouraging families and schools to put away their devices and take a 24-hour break from the online world.

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Richard Hogan, a family psychotherapist, said it was vital for children of all ages to take time out from the online world regularly.

“In the age of ubiquitous internet and smartphones children need time to be children and connect with their friends in real life. So we have to help them to switch off, plug out and tune into life.”

The CyberSafeKids survey of 5,000 primary and secondary school-aged children earlier this year asked young people about their online activity

Nearly a third of all children also said they find it hard to switch off from games and apps, while the proportion who said they “waste time online” climbed from 17 per cent at the age of eight years of age to 66 per cent by the age of 16.

There were clear differences in the type of online activity by age group and gender.

For eight-12 year olds, the most popular activities were gaming (36 per cent); watching videos (26 per cent); using social media (15 per cent); or chatting to friends (13 per cent) via WhatsApp, iMessage or other apps.

Only a very small proportion (4 per cent) used their time online for researching homework or using creative tools such as drawing or making videos.

Among 12-16 year olds, the most common activities were using social media such as TikTok or Snapchat (48 per cent); chatting with friends on WhatsApp, etc (20 per cent); gaming (15 per cent); or watching videos on YouTube (11 per cent).

Similarly, a tiny minority (2 per cent) looked up information for homework projects or used creative apps such as iMovie or Photoshop.

Social media use was most dominant among secondary school-aged girls (55 per cent), who also had a higher incidence than boys of experiencing negative feelings when they spend time online.

Girls aged 12-16 were more likely than boys to feel jealous of others (19 per cent vs 4 per cent); like they’re missing out (18 per cent vs 5 per cent); anxious (14 per cent vs 3 per cent); inadequate (5 per cent vs 1 per cent); and afraid (4 per cent vs 1 per cent).

Boys continue to spend more time gaming than on any other online activity across primary (56 per cent) and secondary school (36 per cent).

Girls had a more negative view of their online activity and were more likely than boys to have said that they “spend too much time online” (70 per cent vs 30 per cent) and “find it hard to switch off from games/apps” (34 per cent vs 21 per cent).

Overall, only 43 per cent of 8-12 year olds said they had a mostly positive experience online compared with 55 per cent of 12-16 year olds.

Alex Cooney, CyberSafeKids chief executive, said children of all ages need help in managing their digital health and wellbeing and taking a break as a family to reassess or reset the balance between our online and offline lives.

“Adults find it just as hard to switch off from the online world as children do, but we need to teach children from an early age how important it is to find a healthy balance between their online and offline lives and to help them understand how addictive some of the apps and games they’re using really are,” she said.