Parents are worried about their kids’ smartphone use—but less than half fully utilize parental controls, research finds

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Only 54% of parents feel that their kids are safe online, with top concerns including predatory behavior, cyberbullying, and seeing inappropriate content.

Meanwhile, less than half of parents (47%) are fully utilizing the parental controls at their disposal.

Those disconnects are among the findings of a new report from the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international nonprofit working to make the internet safer for kids, and Ipsos.

The study, which examined how parents and children perceive and manage online safety, looked at seven different types of parental controls—web filters, app restrictions, privacy settings, time limits, activity monitors, communication limits, and spending limits—and found they are largely under-utilized.

“Our findings show that even as parental controls become more available, adoption remains low,” said Stephen Balkam, CEO and Founder of FOSI, in a news release.

But rather than putting the onus on parents, he said, “This should prompt serious reflection across the tech industry and policymaking circles and reinforce efforts to make parental controls more accessible and user-friendly.”

Parental controls are ever-evolving, and while the report focused on device-level controls, app-level controls are also refreshed often, with recent updates coming from Instagram and, more recently, TikTok (which partially funded this study but did not “influence the research design, methodology, or analysis,” according to FOSI). But often, young users quickly figure out how to get around the controls.

“In a survey we did a couple of years ago, a lot of parents admitted they even ask their kids help in setting them up,” Balkam tells Fortune, “which upends the whole notion of what parental controls means.”

The FOSI research was based on a nationally representative survey of 1,000 parents and 1,000 children aged 10–17. While it found that just around half of parents utilize device-level parental controls on tablets, that percentage drops for other devices such as smartphones (47%), desktops (46%), laptops (43%), smart TVs (38%), and game consoles (35%).

Other findings of the wide-ranging report included:

Parents who report lower screen time for their children are more likely to have installed parental controls, while parents who report higher screen time for their children are less likely to use them.
Posting on social media is the No. 1 screen time concern for both parents and children—with parents significantly more worried.
Children reported engaging in a wide range of online activities—including watching videos, gaming, and social media use—at much higher rates than parents perceived.
On the positive side, 89% of kids say they feel comfortable turning to their parents if something online makes them feel unsafe.

Why parents shy away from safety controls—and how to get started

Alanna Powers, FOSI’s Research and Program Specialist who led the study, said that figuring out device controls can feel “intimidating” to a lot of parents.

“Something that we advocate for a lot is streamlining those controls across systems to make it less intimidating and less confusing,” she tells Fortune.

Adds Balkam, “We need easy to find, easy to use parental controls that are also properly marketed and clear to use.”

Until then, he suggests parents educate themselves, even if it means using ChatGP (or your kids) to ask for help in figuring out the various device control settings. He also points to FOSI’s guide 7 Steps to Good Digital Parenting, highlighting the No. 1 suggestion: To talk with your kids, early and often.

That echoes advice from other experts.

“I want to emphasize that technical solutions are just one part of the puzzle,” Jill Murphy, chief content officer for Common Sense Media, told Fortune recently. “But I do think, in general, parental controls are just not a set-it-and-forget-it solution.”

Murphy pointed out that Common Sense Media research consistently shows that open, ongoing conversations between parents and teens is actually most important, acknowledging that it’s “heavy lifting,” but essential.

“There’s going to be frustration, a complaint, and that’s fine. That’s what it should be that evokes a dialogue,” she said regarding discussions around online safety with kids. “So preparing for that and expecting that, I think, is another essential part of parenting around digital media.”

Powers suggests asking your kids where online they spend most of their time and then, from there, researching those specific parental controls.

How you approach such controls as your child gets older will also change, Balkam notes. He points out that around the end of middle school and into the start of high school, there will typically be a shift from device-based parental controls to the online safety tools created by the apps in order to report, block, stay private, or monitor their own usage.

That’s when FOSI encourages parents to go from being helicopter parents to “co-pilots” with their kids, “simply by saying, ‘Yes, you can go on Instagram now, but before I give you that privilege, show me how you’re going to set up the privacy settings,’” he says. “And treat it like a joint venture, because parents aren’t going to know everything. And the kids, if you involve them and engage them in setting the rules as well as the consequences, they’re far more likely to buy into it.”