Sorry Parents, Your Kids Think Your Online Habits Are Cringe

Gen Z wants to hit Ctrl-Z on many of their parents' online habits, according to a new study that finds serious conflicts between how kids and their elders see and react to digital privacy and security risks.

A new study (PDF) about the realities of parenting and growing up online from password-manager service 1Password and security-software firm Malwarebytes does not exactly make for an encouraging read. At worst, its findings suggest that these different generations occupy different online universes. 

For instance, while 89% of parents reported monitoring the online pursuits of their kids, 66% of teenagers said their parents had “no involvement in their online accounts.” Likewise, 70% of parents said they had set up parental controls on computers at home, but 62% of teens reported no parental controls were enabled on their home devices.

One possible explanation: 72% of Gen Z respondents said they tried to evade parental monitoring with such exploits as using a virtual-private-network service to hide their online traces (13%) or using a device unknown to their elders (9%).  

(My 12-year-old future hacker figured out this workaround to our router-enforced screen-time restrictions: Asking the kids next door for their Wi-Fi password, then finding which upstairs parts of our house their network reached.)

The study also found widespread workarounds of the 13-year-old minimum age that most social platforms enforce as part of their compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act: 56% of Gen Z respondents said they had their first online account at 12 or younger, and 63% said they’d lied about their age to sign up for a service or visit a site.

Teens, in turn, weren’t thrilled about parental oversharing: 73% of Gen Z-ers said they wished moms and dads would ask before posting photos of them online, versus 94% of parents who said they didn’t think they needed to ask for that permission. 

The kids also reported that parents don’t understand about online security when they give such faulty advice as using one password for everything, which 17% said their parents suggested, or using easy-to-remember passwords, reported by 30%. 

(This report also scolds the 33% of parents who suggested writing down passwords on paper, but while that might not pass muster with a password-manager service, security expert Bruce Schneier famously endorsed writing down passwords on a piece of paper you keep with other important pieces of paper—in your wallet.) 

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Instead of taking their parents’ word for these matters, 59% said they had educated themselves about online safety. The results aren’t all good: 62% said they hold back on sharing personal details, but only 48% said they decline strangers’ friend or follow requests. 

The study also asked parents and kids what they would do differently, and far more of the latter said they would chart a different course. While 59% of parents said they would do such things as giving kids less online time at early ages and providing clearer ground rules upfront, 84% of Gen Z said they would do things otherwise with their own kids—for instance, “less technology in exchange for more hands-on and outdoor activities.”

Malwarebytes and 1Password had Method Research and Dynata conduct this survey among some 1,000 Gen Z respondents (meaning born between 1997 and 2009) and their parents from Aug. 3 to Aug. 16. Both groups were “equally split between gender, with a spread of ages, child’s ages, and geographies represented, including readable race groups."