In Their Own Words Cybersurvey report 2019

• Content risk is more commonly experienced than contact risk
• Parents could talk more to their children about online life in general, rather than only when giving advice
• The gap widens between vulnerable and non-vulnerable teens
• Cyberbullying remains stable at 22% of the total sample (this year the survey asked about severity and frequency)
• Meetups are commonplace, 18% have done so and many are benign
• Sexting, desire, coercion and relationship norms
• Online aggression is racist, homophobic, often gendered, and hate speech is common
• Spending quite a bit of money in games
• Too few of our teenagers are actively following the online safety advice they were taught
• The positive aspects of online life are enjoyed by all young people but appear much more important to already vulnerable teens than to their peers
• The influence of vloggers with a particular age group

Young people are now 1/3 less likely to tell anyone they have been cyberbullied than in 2015.

The percentage of teens involved in sexting has remained remarkably stable since 2015, but the consequences have worsened.

The percentage of young people who come across pro-anorexia content has decreased slightly from 29% in 2015 to 23% in 2019 but remains high.

The percentage of those who say they have been taught to stay safe online is very slightly higher in 2019, but there is little change in the percentage of teens who follow what they have been taught. This remains at a little over half, at 58% (it was 57% in 2015 and fell to 53% in 2016, 58% in 2017 where it remains in 2019). This suggests that online safety education has not been regularly followed by over 40% of teens in this age range 11-16 years, and this rate is not improving.

Despite many campaigns and calls for change, there is no decrease in the percentage of teenagers who have come across websites that promote violence, hatred, or racist views. 18% reported this in 2015, 20% in 2016 and 19% in 2017. In The Cybersurvey 2019, more than one in five (21%) teenagers said they had come across websites with this type of content.