When Australia set an age limit on social media ten months ago, it became the first country to do so, and several others have since followed its lead.
However, a new first-of-its-kind survey suggests a birthday alone won’t make children ready for what they’ll face online.
The inaugural Australian Digital Readiness Index, based on responses from 1,029 parents of children aged 9 to 14, found just one in eight children consistently showed all three key digital capabilities: managing their screen use, judging what they see online and asking for help.
And age is doing little to close that gap.
Older, but not necessarily wiser online
While children’s ability to judge online content doubled between the ages of 9 and 14, their ability to manage screen time and seek help showed no clear improvement with age. Years spent on a first phone made no difference at all.
What parents do at home mattered far more. Yet nearly half (45%) said they would use government or eSafety guidance, but currently don’t.
The Index also found that around two thirds of the differences in children’s capabilities sit beyond the home, in places like school, friendship groups and the platforms themselves. For principals, that finding lands at a time when digital capability in Australian classrooms is already heading in the wrong direction.
In May, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) found students’ ICT literacy had fallen to its lowest point since testing began in 2005, despite young people being more digitally immersed than any generation before them.
Just half (50%) of Year 6 students reached the proficient standard, down from 55% in 2022 and below the 2011 result. In Year 10, only 37% reached the standard, the lowest result since the assessment began.
‘Parental controls are guardrails, not driving lessons’
The Digital Readiness Lab’s founder, Rinat Strahlhofer, said Principals can play an important part in helping parents explain the reasons behind their rules and give children a real say, an approach just four in ten parents currently use.
“I'd encourage Principals to make digital readiness something children practise at school and families build on at home,” Strahlhofer told The Educator. “In class, when students encounter a questionable video, headline or AI answer, ask, ‘How do we know that's true?’ Make critical judgement something kids practise.”
Strahlhofer said leaders should also create a school culture where children feel safe telling a trusted adult when something online has upset, confused or worried them.
“Our Index found only one in three parents said their child would seek that help,” she said, suggesting that families could be given questions to explore together. “These questions could be ‘where should our devices sleep at night, and why?’ and ‘When should screens go away so we're rested for school?’”
Strahlhofer said parents hold the boundaries, but children have a voice.
“Ideally before the great screen-time negotiations begin, because ‘just five more minutes’ is never five minutes,” she said. “And how do we know they're ready? Think about teenagers learning to drive; we don't hand over the keys just because they've had another birthday – we look for skills.”
Strahlhofer said the real test is whether a child can put the device down when it’s time, question what they see, and come to a trusted adult when something goes wrong online, even if they’ve made a mistake.
“Parental controls are guardrails, not driving lessons,” she said. “The goal is to raise children who can make good decisions online, even when we're not beside them.”
The blind spot parents aren’t worried about
One of the survey’s eye-opening findings was that parents rated judging what’s true online among their children’s least developed skills, yet ranked it seventh of ten concerns. Parents rated 14-year-olds twice as likely as nine-year-olds to be strong on critical judgement (46% against 23%) – the only capability with a clear age pattern.
Professor Mathieu O’Neil, a University of Canberra communication scholar who co-designs school information literacy resources, says the gap deserves close attention.
“Improving students’ capacity to assess the credibility of information involves challenging long held beliefs regarding the nature of ‘critical thinking’,” Professor O’Neil told The Educator. “All critical literacy approaches take time, and a careful analysis of texts from a variety of perspectives.”
Professor O’Neil said this deep engagement is ineffective in low-quality information environments such as social media, where information is super-abundant and attention is finite.
“In fact, it can even work against us, since disinformation is designed to capture and hold our attention,” he said. “Civic MIL strategies therefore need to be fast and efficient.”
Professor O’Neil said students should be able to quickly evaluate which claims are worth their attention.
“A cognitively viable evaluation of information credibility is ‘lateral reading’ which entails departing from one source or claim and cross-checking information using other sources assessed as reliable.”
How schools can make speaking up feel safe
Parents rated only about a third of children as consistently able to turn to a trusted adult when something goes wrong online. Child Safety Expert and former WA Police Detective, Kristi McVee, said fear of the consequences is often what keeps them quiet.
“Kids often don't seek help because they are worried about what happens next. Will I be in trouble? Will I lose my device? Will I get blamed?” McVee told The Educator. “We also assume kids will know what to do if and when something goes wrong, and that seeking help is instinctive or innate.”
McVee said her years in the police force offer a useful lesson for parents and schools.
“As a police officer, I didn't walk into difficult or dangerous situations without scenario training first. Kids deserve the same preparation long before they are handed a phone or device,” she said. “Practising the ‘what would you do if’ moments, like a strange message or an image they didn't want to see, makes seeking help feel familiar and supportive, not disciplinary.”
McVee said that practice also works best inside open, judgement-free conversations.
“Schools and parents can begin early and keep them going by opening the conversation and creating safe spaces,” she said, adding that the message also needs repeating often: everyone makes mistakes, including adults.
“You won't be in trouble for telling us, and you don't have to handle it alone.”