Sorry Parents, Your Kids Think Your Online Habits Are Cringe

pcmag.com:

Gen Z wants to hit Ctrl-Z on many of their parents' online habits, according to a new study that finds serious conflicts between how kids and their elders see and react to digital privacy and security risks.

A new study (PDF(Opens in a new window)) about the realities of parenting and growing up online from password-manager service 1Password and security-software firm Malwarebytes does not exactly make for an encouraging read. At worst, its findings suggest that these different generations occupy different online universes. 

For instance, while 89% of parents reported monitoring the online pursuits of their kids, 66% of teenagers said their parents had “no involvement in their online accounts.” Likewise, 70% of parents said they had set up parental controls on computers at home, but 62% of teens reported no parental controls were enabled on their home devices.

One possible explanation: 72% of Gen Z respondents said they tried to evade parental monitoring with such exploits as using a virtual-private-network service to hide their online traces (13%) or using a device unknown to their elders (9%).  

(My 12-year-old future hacker figured out this workaround to our router-enforced screen-time restrictions: Asking the kids next door for their Wi-Fi password, then finding which upstairs parts of our house their network reached.)

The study also found widespread workarounds of the 13-year-old minimum age that most social platforms enforce as part of their compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act(Opens in a new window): 56% of Gen Z respondents said they had their first online account at 12 or younger, and 63% said they’d lied about their age to sign up for a service or visit a site.

Teens, in turn, weren’t