Children as young as five are using social media, despite most platforms having rules that require users to be over the age of 13.
An annual study into media habits, by Ofcom, found that a third of parents of five to seven-year-olds revealed that their child had a social media profile.
Among 8-11-year-olds who used social media, the most popular platform was TikTok, and every third of the research sample had an account.
TikTok is a “strictly 13+ platform.”
A spokesperson for the viral video-sharing platform said: “We have processes in place to enforce our minimum age requirements, both at the point of registration and through ongoing proactive removal of suspected underage accounts from the platform.
"Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our community, especially our youth."
'Truly striking'
The report noted that even younger children – TikTots as Ofcom called them – were watching videos on TikTok, adding that 16% of these children are aged three to four.
This mainly happens in cases where children are shown TikTok videos from a parent's device or another older person, which rules out the possibility that three and four-year-olds have their own accounts.
Ofcom's director of strategy and research, Yih-Choung Teh, said the findings were "truly surprising".
"I have an 11-year-old and an eight-year-old," he said, adding that 60% of their peers have a social media profile, which I find a bit surprising.
"Major digital platforms set minimum ages in their terms and conditions – but it seems they are not really being enforced."
But Mr Teh also said parents should be aware of what their children were doing online.
"It's not always very easy to tell what they're watching and I think as a parent, we have a responsibility to have a good dialogue with our children about what they're doing," he said.
But the survey also found that 22% of parents of children aged three to four and 38% of those aged eight to 11 said they would allow their child to have a social media profile before they reached the minimum age.
Incognito Mode
"Many children may tactically use other accounts or 'finstas' – Instagram accounts – to hide aspects of their online lives from their parents," Ofcom suggested.
Instagram is a platform for over 13s and offers a range of parental controls.
But across social media, many children choose to have multiple profiles on the same social media app or site, the survey suggested.
Two out of every three eight- to 11-year-olds surveyed used multiple social media accounts or profiles, the regulator said.
"Among them, almost half (46%) have an account that their family can view," the report says.
The survey also found that one in five children aged 12-17 browse incognito mode or delete their browsing history.
(Full article at BBC)