Nearly 20% of 10 to 15-year-olds have experienced online bullying and almost one in 10 teenagers have received a sexual message, according to statistics.
More than 92% of children go online daily, with 30% saying they use the internet “almost all the time”, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday.
The results of the 10 to 15-year-olds’ Crime Survey for England and Wales also showed almost one in five children had spoken online with someone they had never met in person.
Girls were more likely to experience online bullying, with 22.5% reporting it compared to 16% of boys, the figures showed.
The data showed that 9.5% of 13- to 15-year-olds had received a sexual message in the last year and 1.6% said they had sent one.
According to the data, the time spent online by children had gone up, with 58.1% of youngsters spending three hours or more online on a school day, compared to 47.6% of those asked in March 2020.
