Six in ten parents concerned about child financial harms

The scale of parental concern over the impact of online financial harms on children has been uncovered in our latest research for the Child Financial Harms programme. 

Our report, Short changed and out of time, features results from a poll involving over 2,000 parents of children aged seven to 18. 

It reveals how relevant parents believe online financial harms are to them, and how important it is that they are dealt with.

The poll, conducted with YouGov, found that:

•  62% of parents agree that financial harm online is a relevant issue for their children and family that needs to be dealt with.
• 30% of parents don’t agree they know where to go for information about online child financial risks and harms.
• When seeking accurate information regarding their child their child experiencing a problem involving money, only 10% of parents would most trust the app or platform where the problem occurred.

For parents whose child(ren) has experienced financial harm online, the most common problem was identified as being through accidental purchases (46%), followed by paid-for services they couldn't cancel. 

The online world is constantly evolving, which means there are more challenges that parents can feel underprepared for. Virtual items make up the top five, including loss of virtual items and inability to spend virtual currency. 

The top five ways parents said their child was affected online were: 

• Accidental purchases - 46% 
• Subscriptions for a paid-for service they weren't able to cancel - 24% 
• Making a purchase and not receiving the item(s) - 19% 
• Losing virtual game items - 18%  
• Not being able to spend virtual currency - 16%

The report calls for the concerns of parents to be heard by tech companies, finance providers and policy makers, and for them to acknowledge the negative impacts, including wellbeing, on children. 

It also calls for a system change in how some online financial ecosystems exploit children and young people. This includes addressing frictionless spending, third-party parasite apps that facilitate gambling behaviours, a lack of cooling-off periods for purchases, and the ability to trace payments. 

Vicki Shotbolt, CEO and founder of Parent Zone, said: “Parent Zone supports families with many of the challenges they face in the digital world, whilst also helping them to unlock opportunity. 

As tech optimists, we want the digital environments families live in to work for them. But money motivates bad actors and If we don’t start to recognise that money is a key driver in many online harms facing children and young people, we will be reducing our ability to tackle them upstream. 

Passing the buck needs to stop. Tech companies, finance providers and policymakers are all avoiding the issue of child financial harms online. We can’t keep leaving parents lacking support. 

Change needs to start now.”

Read the full report here

The research was funded by Nominet, the guardians of the UK domain, via its Countering Online Harms Innovation Fund. It was commissioned by Parent Zone as part of the Child Financial Harms programme. 

For more information, visit the Child Financial Harms site.