Government · UK · Office for National Statistics
84% of 10-15s Are Online 3+ Hours a Day at Weekends
The ONS surveyed 6,031 children aged 10 to 15 in England and Wales. Most are online for three or more hours a day at weekends, nearly nine in ten reach the internet through a phone, and video and messaging outrank every other activity.
Source published Summarised
Key findings at a glance
- 84% of children aged 10 to 15 spent three or more hours online a day at the weekend
- 25% spent seven or more hours online a day at the weekend
- 66% spent three or more hours online on an ordinary weekday
- 88% used a smartphone to go online, the most common device by a wide margin
- 62% used a desktop computer, laptop or notebook to go online
- 83% watched videos, reels, vlogs or livestreams, the most common online activity
- 76% used messaging, the second most common online activity
- 89% read or received information on staying safe online in the last 12 months
- 95% of those who received online safety information got it from school
- 60% received guidance specifically about sharing or posting personal information
- 37% of children aged 10 to 15 saw violent or criminal content online in the last 12 months
- 88% of 13 to 15 year olds exposed to hateful content met at least some of it unintentionally
What the report covers
The Office for National Statistics published first findings from the redesigned Children's Crime Survey for England and Wales on 2 September 2026, covering the year ending February 2026. Alongside the crime and safety questions the survey carries a substantial online-behaviour module, and that is the part worth reading if you plan media in the UK. It is the first output from the new online survey design, and the ONS classes it as official statistics in development rather than accredited official statistics.
The time and device picture is stark. Around four in five children aged 10 to 15 (84%) spent three or more hours online a day at the weekend, and a quarter (25%) spent seven or more. On an ordinary weekday the three-hour figure is still 66%. Most reached the internet on a smartphone (88%), well ahead of a desktop, laptop or notebook (62%), which tracks with Ofcom's finding that smartphones take 77% of UK adult online time and pushes it further at this age.
What they do there is narrower than the hours suggest. Watching videos, reels, vlogs or livestreams (83%) and messaging (76%) were the two most common activities. The survey also asked about online safety education: 89% had read or received some information on staying safe online in the last 12 months, most commonly on how to block or report upsetting content (71%), talking to people online (66%) and sharing or posting personal information (60%). Of those who received any such information, 95% got it from school and 62% from a parent or guardian.
What this means for UK marketers
Two things here matter to anyone buying media in the UK, and neither is the screen-time headline on its own.
The first is shape. This is a phone-first, video-first audience with real weight behind it: 88% go online by smartphone, 83% watch video, and a quarter are online seven or more hours a day at weekends. The direction is not new, but the intensity at this age runs ahead of most planning assumptions. Creative built for a desktop viewport is built for the 62% case, not the 88% one.
The second is adjacency, and it is the more expensive problem. Among 13 to 15 year olds exposed to hateful content, 88% met at least some of it unintentionally, and 37% of all 10 to 15 year olds saw violent or criminal content during the year. Unintentional exposure is served, not searched. If a campaign runs programmatically without a maintained exclusion list, that is the inventory a brand can end up sitting beside, and the brand carries the association whether or not it chose the audience.
Treat platform age gates as weak filters rather than real ones. Read alongside our earlier report on children bypassing online age checks, the working position is that 13 to 15 year olds are reachable on most consumer inventory even when they were never in the targeting brief. For age-restricted categories (alcohol, gambling, consumer finance, cosmetic procedures) that is a compliance exposure rather than simple wastage, and section 5 of the CAP Code puts the responsibility on the advertiser, not the platform. The Online Safety Act 2023 tightens the environment side of this, not the advertiser side, so it does not transfer the risk off your desk.
Three things worth doing this quarter. Pull placement and app-exclusion reports on any always-on social or programmatic activity and actually read the tail. Check that age-restricted campaigns are not leaning on self-declared age alone. And if you sell to parents, note that 95% of online safety information reaches these children through school, a channel most brands ignore completely. Our digital marketing team runs placement audits of this kind as standard.
How they got the data
Estimates come from the Children's Crime Survey for England and Wales, run operationally as the Young Person's Safety Survey. It has moved from a face-to-face interviewer-led design to an online self-completion survey, which children aged 10 to 15 complete independently through a secure platform. Responses from 6,031 children were used in the analysis for the year ending February 2026. Collection rounds ran in December 2025 and March 2026, capturing experiences between December 2024 and February 2026. The sample is drawn using linked education and health administrative data, is designed to represent children living in private households in England and Wales, and excludes children in residential care or other institutional settings. Statistical weighting is applied, and reported differences are significant at the 5% level.
Two limits are worth carrying into any use of these numbers. First, the move to online self-completion is a break in the time series, so these figures are not comparable with earlier face-to-face waves and no trend claim can be made from them yet. Second, the harmful-content questions were asked only of 13 to 15 year olds because of their sensitivity, which is why those figures carry a narrower age band than the online-activity ones. The geography is England and Wales, not the UK, so Scotland and Northern Ireland are out of scope.
Government · UK
Read the full report
From Office for National Statistics · published 02/09/2026