Many parents know the struggle that comes with finding a digital balance for their pre-teen. They’re too young for social media platforms with 13+ age minimums and complain about being too old for child accounts. So, what spaces exist for pre-teens and how can you encourage your 9-12-year-old to engage with these spaces?
Below, online safety experts from a range of backgrounds share their insights and tips into the lack of specific spaces designed for pre-teens.
Summary
- Algorithms can accelerate the extremes of the digital world.
- Underage social media use can influence children to skip the ‘tween’ stage.
- Both online and offline spaces are ‘ignoring’ pre-teen groups.
- Industry needs to create spaces with developmental stages in mind, not just age.
- Appropriate spaces can help pre-teens explore and experiment.
- Find resources to support pre-teens.
What causes young people to ‘skip’ the tween stage?
Some have observed a change in interests of pre-teens, where they skip right from child-friendly interests to those designed for teens and young adults. Following complex skincare routines is one such example. Why might they be skipping interests more traditionally appropriate for the 9-12 age group?
Children between the ages of 9 and 12 are in a transitional phase where they’re curious, searching and sensitive to belonging. But our culture hardly allows for transitions. The digital world knows only extremes: childish or adolescent, cute or cool. If you want to belong, you have to position yourself early on.
Social media, advertising and pop culture accelerate this dynamic. Instead of offering space for children to experiment on their own, these spaces force them into predetermined roles. Psychologically, this is not a sign of maturity, but of conformity. The “in-between” – the open, playful search – disappears.
This is how a generation grows up that wants to be visible before it knows who it is.
As a researcher of child-safe AI, I often see how recommendations from algorithms compress developmental stages. Pre-teens are encountering teen-oriented content not because they seek it out deliberately, but because engagement-driven algorithms can blur the boundaries between age groups. This accelerates exposure and collapses that natural ‘in between’ moment of gradual discovery for 9-12-year-olds.
Also, in my work on child-centred AI design, I’ve found that pre-teens use media as a rehearsal space for identity. When children don’t see appealing, age-matched models in digital spaces, they reach upward – imitating influencers and older teens. It’s as though they’re trying on adolescence to see how it feels.
There seems to be less and less new high quality content available for the 9-12 age group. Inevitably, this forces children to look elsewhere for content they enjoy. This means they are more likely to encounter content designed for older age groups.
How might underage access to social media impact pre-teens?
Our research shows that 43% of 9-12-year-olds are accessing social media platforms. Popular platforms, including TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat all require users to be 13 or older to sign up. So, if a pre-teen is using the platform, they are doing so through bypassing safeguards. Thus, the platform will see them as older than they are, recommending content based on an incorrect age. So, how might that impact their development?
For 9-12-year-olds, social media acts like a giant mirror in which they hope to recognise themselves. However, they find only projections. Algorithms don’t offer guidance and instead only exaggerate emotions, bodies, beauty and belonging.
For children who are just beginning to develop a self-image, this becomes a challenge. Likes replace feedback, trends define what is ‘normal’ and the feeling of being seen depends on mechanisms they do not understand. Thus, identity emerges as performance, not as experience.
The problem is not just the platform, but what it replaces: genuine socialisation, a range of role models and safe spaces where uncertainty is okay. Those who become visible on social media too early learn to show themselves but not to discover themselves.
When 9-12-year-olds browse social media spaces, one benefit is that they could be supported to explore creativity, humour and shared interests beyond their immediate environment. But they’re also exposed to trends and values meant for older teens, which can fast-track identity formation and shift interests toward performance, popularity and self-presentation based on aesthetics.
They really need spaces that nurture curiosity and self-expression in this ‘in between’ stage while safeguarding their emotional wellbeing.
What are some examples of missing pre-teen spaces?
Both online and offline spaces often fail to offer a middle ground between the childhood and teenage years. Even entertainment such as new films tend to lean one way or the other. In which other ways does this phenomenon take shape?
Pre-teens have few places where they can explore who they are without being judged, lectured or marketed to.
Offline, there is a lack of open, moderated spaces between school and leisure activities where children can be creative on their own and feel safe at the same time. Online, the same thing is missing: spaces that are social, creative and protected.
Instead, there are two extremes: overly educational children’s platforms that generate little interest for pre-teens and global social media worlds that thrive on attention economy and self-promotion. The ‘middle ground’ where genuine self-efficacy has space to develop doesn’t exist on a wide enough scale.
As long as platforms think in terms of target groups rather than developmental stages, this generation will remain without a digital home of its own.
Yes! I notice in my research how few digital or physical environments are truly designed for 9-12-year-olds. Online, there’s a gap between playful “kids’ apps” and mature social platforms; pre-teens have little that feels both socially authentic and safe.
Offline, too, youth clubs, libraries and creative programmes often cater either to children or teens. There are few inviting, age-appropriate spaces where pre-teens can socialise, create and explore autonomy together.
Where I live, there is almost limitless open spaces and lots of sporting and athletic facilities, but parents and children themselves have become more fearful of venturing out, particularly as the nights draw in. Whether or to what extent their fears are justified is a different question. Often the fears are exaggerated by sensationalist media coverage.
How can we help pre-teens explore more developmentally appropriate interests?
The responsibility lies not with children, but with the adults who shape their environments, both online and offline.
The industry must stop treating child protection as a design problem. It’s not just about filters, age limits or parental controls, but cultural responsibility. It’s about algorithms that enable both safety and participation and it’s about platforms that don’t manipulate children with reward systems, but take their curiosity seriously.
Parents, in turn, need support so that they can accompany their children rather than supervise them. Those who explore digital worlds together with their children convey a sense of connection, not control. And those who explain boundaries instead of just setting them strengthen their children’s judgment and self-efficacy.
Child protection begins when adults stop confusing convenience with trust.
I believe both Industry and parents can play active roles in shaping healthier options for pre-teens. Industry can design ‘bridge’ experiences — platforms or games that help these pre-teens feel independent while providing guidance in choosing age-appropriate content and of course, rigorous moderation systems in place. Parents and carers, meanwhile, could try co-exploring digital media with their children — ask them what feels right, what feels meaningful to them (rather than only what is going viral or becoming popular).
Final thoughts from experts
What happens during this phase of life often determines how children deal with freedom later on. If they learn that visibility is more important than relationships, or achievement more important than belonging, they carry this logic into adulthood.
9-12-year-olds are not a marginal group; they are the hinge between childhood and adolescence. If we do not offer them their own spaces, we send them into worlds they do not understand — and then hold them responsible for being overwhelmed.
Child protection does not mean keeping children away, but creating structures that enable development. We need spaces where curiosity, vulnerability and growth can coexist, both offline and online. This is not an educational luxury, but a social necessity.
My research is constantly trying to bring tech in alignment with how children grow and evolve through different stages (not just ‘child-safe’ tech but developmentally differentiated technology). And this makes me think about how pre-teens’ needs reveal a deeper design challenge — about dignity.
This age group wants to feel capable and seen, yet most systems either overprotect or overexpose them. The future of digital design should focus on scaffolding agency: giving pre-teens space to imagine, question and create (within safe boundaries).