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The report presents selected findings from the EUKidsOnline 2025 survey. It draws on survey responses from 29,169 children aged 9 to 16
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The children are from 19 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, and Switzerland.
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Online activities
Children’s online lives are deeply embedded in their everyday social, educational and leisure activities. Children’s digital media use is concentrated during leisure time, not during class or at night.
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Communication with friends is the most frequent activity, followed by watching videos on social media, listening to music and communicating with parents or caregivers.
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Social Media Profiles
Social media use increases strongly with age, but it also begins before the mid-teen years. In most countries, the share with a profile roughly doubles or more between ages 9–11 and 12–14. Without having a personal account children may and still do use social media-related services.
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Online Experiences and Worries
Children’s online experiences are mixed: Only half (48%) say they feel safe online. 6 in 10 children (61%) say they know what to do if someone acts online in a way they do not like.
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Up to one in five 9–16-year-olds in Europe report encountering some forms of problematic user-generated content. A variety of forms of problematic content are reported by 12–16-year-olds in Europe. Conspiracy theories are the most common, highlighting the rise in mis- and disinformation online.
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Children’s worries about online harms are real, particularly around image-based abuse and manipulated images, but they sit alongside wider worries about family, safety, school, health, conflict and the future.
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Children from lower socio-economic homes were more likely to search online for information about mental health and wellbeing. Notably, around a third of children are not at all worried about using screens too much, a further third are a little worried, and the remaining third are quite or very worried.
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Children’s own views on age-based restrictions
Children are highly ambivalent about age-based restrictions: 33% say they would feel safer online, 45% disagree. Children’s greatest concerns relate to freedom, responsibility and social connection. Specifically, they are worried that such restrictions would make it more difficult to stay in touch with friends
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The findings show patterns of exposure, not simple causality: Overall, the findings do not support a simple interpretation that access to social media is either clearly safe or clearly harmful.
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Recommendations
The finding that few children feel safe online is a serious warning signal
It strengthens the case for robust implementation and enforcement of European platform regulation
The findings show that it is mainly the older teens who report exposure to potentially harmful online user-generated content.
Age-based social media restrictions would not prevent much of this exposure, though it could protect a small but likely vulnerable minority of younger children.
More important is safety-by-design that would benefit all children up to 18.
Reference: Staksrud, Elisabeth, Livingstone, Sonia, Olafsson, Kjartan (2026) Use, views and worries on age bans on social media: responses from 29,169 children in 19 European countries. Technical Report. EU Kids Online, University of Oslo and LSE.