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Major shift in UK children’s behaviour as time online overtakes time watching TV for first time ever, reveals new report.

Tablet ownership also soared this year – up by 50% from last year. Just six years after the UK release of the iPad, tablets have swept into children’s lives, with two in three (67%) now having their own device.

The new data shows that YouTube has taken centre stage in children’s lives this year to become the place they turn to for entertainment, music, games, TV programmes, instruction and advice. Half use the site every day, almost all do so on occasion.

The majority of children who use YouTube visit the site to access music videos (58%). Around half of users keep themselves entertained with funny content on YouTube (52%). Around a third watch gaming content, vlogs/blogs, TV programmes or ‘how to’ videos.

Children are also going online more in their bedrooms. Three in four children (73%) can now access the internet in their room, up from two in three (63%) last year.

The 2016 CHILDWISE Monitor is a comprehensive annual report looking at five to 16-year-olds media consumption, purchasing and social habits as well as key behaviour. More than 2000 children in schools across the United Kingdom completed in-depth online surveys for the report.

“Growing access to the internet at any time and in any place, and a blurring of television content across channels and devices, brings a landmark change in behaviour this year. TV viewing has been redefined,” says Simon Leggett, Research Director from CHILDWISE.

“Children are now seeking out the content of their choice. They still find traditional TV programmes engaging but are increasingly watching them online and on-demand or binge watching box sets.”

This year, for the first time, tablet devices have overtaken laptops/PCs/netbooks as the main type of computer that children have in their homes. Four in five children (79%) now live in a house with a tablet device in it. This is a significant rise from just three in five (61%) last year.

Findings of the report also include...

Favourite internet vloggers
Zoella, real name Zoe Sugg, is children’s favourite YouTuber, followed by TheDiamondMinecart, Thatcher Joe, KSI and Stampy.

For the first time the CHILDWISE Monitor report asked children age 7 to 16 that used YouTube who their favourite YouTubers were or what were their favourite channels on the site.

The YouTuber with the most mentions was fashion and beauty vlogger Zoella. She was a favourite among girls with 15% naming her as favourite and 8% naming her overall.

TheDiamondMinecart, real name Daniel Middleton, posts daily videos about the popular game Minecraft. He was popular among boys, chosen by 6%, compared to 4% overall.

Zoella’s boyfriend Alfie Deyes of PointlessBlog fame (named by 2% overall) and her brother Joe Sugg, known as Thatcher Joe (4%) are continuing favourites.

“This is the year YouTube use has exploded among children with almost half (48%) using it every day and just 10% never using it,” says Simon

“Around a third of children who use YouTube watch vlogs/blogs. Girls are much more likely to be interested in these than boys and viewing is highest for older children, peaking at half of 11-12 year olds.”

However, the majority of children are passive consumers, rather than contributors to YouTube, rarely going beyond liking/disliking content or subscribing to channels. Only a minority ever post comments, share or upload videos.

“Children of all ages, both boys and girls, find somebody to follow on YouTube who speaks directly to them and reflects their interests, coming across as authentic and unmediated,” Simon added.

“For older girls, vloggers are filling the role previously held by magazines – somewhere to read about other people’s lives, problems, cringes, new ideas and fashion.”

Boys of all ages enjoy FIFA football gaming commentary by vloggers such as Joe Weller and Miniminter. Younger boys like Minecraft gameplay vloggers such as TheDiamondMinecart, Stampy and iBallisticSquid. Older boys favour KSI

CHILDWISE is an independent market research agency specialising in children and young people.

The Monitor Report 2015-6 covers computers and the internet; websites and applications; gaming, YouTube; mobile phones; TV viewing; music; reading; cinema; children’s equipment; money; purchasing; sports & activities; health & wellbeing and social awarenes.

E-safety Support launched in February 2013, shortly after Ofsted released the new requirements for e-safety in schools. Since launch we have added over 100 resources, send over 150 e-safety news bulletins and been joined by almost 11,000 members.

The most significant development since we launched has been the addition of 7 online training courses. These have been tailor made to reach the whole school community, and have been created specifically for pupils, staff, parents and governors. We are delighted to report that these courses have been issued to over 52,000 candidates - a number which is growing rapidly on daily basis.

Over the last 3 years, the online safety environment has seen many changes, both good and bad. We have seen the phenomenon of online trends making headlines for all the wrong reasons with Neknominate, Slenderman and various risky (and unfortunately sometimes fatal) challenges all playing out on social media. But there have also been positive trends too, with the ice bucket challenge for example which used the platform to raise millions of pounds for charity.

More safeguards for young people have also been made available - the big 4 media providers making changes to their parental controls to help protect children in the home and the RDI rolling-out their Friendly WiFi scheme to help protect them when in public places to name just two.

Of course, we must mention the most recent issue of young people being groomed online into extremism. This has been an incredibly challenging issue for many teachers and schools to tackle - we will continue to monitor this area particularly to ensure that we are providing appropriate resources to help support our members.

We are, of course, delighted to have so many members benefiting from the resources available at www.e-safetysupport.com, some of the comments we have received can be seen on our testimonials page - if you would like to let us know your thoughts, please email feedback@e-safetysupport.com or use the comments section below.

Over the coming months, we are looking forward to bringing you a new look to the website along with more e-safety resources. Will continue to monitor the e-safety issues to ensure we are keeping you up-to-speed with the important issues.

Finally, below is an infographic showing the E-safety Support story so far, highlighting the important developments across the site in the first 3 years - we look forward to continuing our journey with you.

We are delighted to have received over 700 entries for our #esstips competition, supporting the Safer Internet Day 2016 activities.

Primary Category
In the primary category, special mention goes to the following entries:

The primary school winning entry was:
Never chat with anyone you don’t know, because you never know how far it will go
This came in from the students at Hawley Place School in Camberley

Secondary Category
Special mentions in the secondary category go to:

The secondary school winning entry goes to:
If you don't know the sender, it might be a pretender!
This winning entry came from St James Senior Girls School in London

Congratulations go to everyone who entered - we had a fantastic response and we hope the students enjoyed taking part.

We would like to thank e-safety consultant Tim Pinto for choosing our winners, he had quite a job picking from hundreds of great entries.

It's great that schools are still tweeting with the hashtag #esstips - we will continue to retweet these tips throughout the year.