Research evidence collected by The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) found that almost four in 10 parents of a three to five year-old reported that their child uses at least one social media app or site.
With roughly 2.2 million children in this age group as of 2024, the CSJ said this suggests there could be 814,000 users of social media between three and five years old, a rise of around 220,000 users from the year before.
As of 10th December 2025 the UK government require social media platforms will have to take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from having a social media account, in effect blocking them from platforms such as Meta's Instagram, TikTok and Snap's Snapchat.
The report suggests that parents need to be made aware of the risks and how to deal with them. There is plenty of evidence that a large number of parents sign their children up to Whatsapp, for family comunications and Tik Tok as they think the site is all about dancing and they cannot preceive what risks there might be.
Monitoring what children are doing online and what topics they are searching for is an opportunity to trigger those important conversations that need to take place between parent and children. Open discussion and sharing of concerns, both ways, will help to keep everyone safe.
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