The Internet is becoming an increasingly important daily tool… Even for the youngest. At least that’s what a study published on Thursday, January 19th, by the Mozilla organization, a specialist in the publication of freely accessible products on the Internet, suggests.

In particular, this study shows that 87% of French children (from 0 to 17 years old) are entitled to surf the Internet for up to 4 hours a day. They do this mainly via smartphones or tablets and are thus leaving the classic computer behind. A statistic that does qualify, however, as 47% of parents set a daily limit of around 1 hour. Mozilla states that on average in each country covered by the study (France, USA, Canada, UK and Germany), almost 90% of children have used the internet.

“A space that lacks security” for 73% of parents

However, young French children are far from the precocious Internet users: if in the four other countries the first hours spent on the Internet are mainly between 5 and 8 years old, in France the majority of children only discover the Internet at the age of 8 to 11 years (29% vs. 32%).

But what do the youngest use on the Internet? 43% of parents say this is for school purposes, 40% for watching entertainment videos and 29% for online gaming. But in fact, leisure is taking over education, with videos (67%) and games (61%) largely dominating school needs (40%).

So do French parents veil their faces over their children’s internet use? In any case, 80 percent of them consider “their children’s relationship to the Internet to be healthy”. However, the web is not a place without risk. Almost 3/4 of the French (73%) see the web as “a space that lacks security”. Among parents’ top fears, 61% cite “exposure to inappropriate content,” and around 50% worry about cyberbullying and exposure to online predators. Despite this, 45% of French people publish information or photos of their children online “at least occasionally”.

Only 39% of the French use parental controls

As a result, to deal with these new fears, parents are addressing online safety issues at an increasingly early age. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, more than 20% of parents between the ages of 2 and 5 do this (compared to 8% in France). The French are particularly vigilant, with more than 50% (51%) personally monitoring their children once they are connected, while just 18% choose to install confidentiality and anti-tracing applications.

The use of parental control tools, particularly in the UK (63% of parents have one installed), is still quite limited in France, with only 39% of French using them.