How many under-13s use each app?

Last updated October 4, 2026. Reviewed by Nikolaus Greb, NYU Tech and Society Lab.

We define “underage use” as usage of an app by those who are younger than allowed by app policy or law. Specific rules vary by app and jurisdiction, but many apps have at least some restrictions for children under 13.

We include the seven surveys from our index that provide per-app under-13-usage data, across the US, UK, and Australia — Ofcom’s Children and Parents Media Literacy Tracker and its Children’s Online Safety Tracker, the ABCD Study, Thorn, the eSafety Commissioner’s Behind the Screen and Digital Use & Risk surveys, and the Common Sense Census.

It is organized as key findings, then limitations and areas for future work, then the studies table and the individual study sections. A table of age-specific use restrictions, by app and jurisdiction, is included at the end as well.

Key findings

1. There is substantial underage use of many apps by children with their own account, with meaningful variation by app

In the US, the ABCD study (probability sample) reports data on the 11–12 year olds in their sample suggesting that 36.6% had an account on Instagram and 35.2% on Snapchat; both apps prohibit under-13 accounts by policy. (These figures are derived by multiplying the percent of 11–12 year olds that had at least one account — 63.8% — by the percent of those who reported having an account on a specific service.) Applying ABCD’s combined 11–12-year-old rates to US Census population estimates for 12-year-olds suggests a conservative estimate of roughly 1.4 million 12-year-olds with an underage account on each of Instagram and Snapchat at the time, assuming ownership on each app does not decline between ages 11 and 12. TikTok, at 43.5%, and YouTube, at 40.1%, had the highest population rates in the study — but both offered pathways for policy-compliant under-13 use, so underage use of them cannot be determined from this study. Additionally, Thorn (non-probability sample) asks 9–12-year-olds directly whether they have used an app, website or platform before they were old enough to: 43% say that they have. (Note this question covers online services beyond social media; the survey report does not break this result out by app.)

In the UK, Ofcom’s Children and Parents Media Literacy Tracker (non-probability sample; 2025/26 fieldwork) found that 15% of 8–9-year-olds and 35% of 10–12-year-olds reported having their own profile on WhatsApp. The corresponding figures were 10% and 20% for TikTok, 9% and 21% for Snapchat, 8% and 10% for Facebook, and 5% and 8% for Instagram. These five services did not permit under-13 accounts in the UK during fieldwork. The new wave reports YouTube and YouTube Kids separately; owning a profile on either does not by itself establish underage use.

In Australia, eSafety’s Behind the Screen (non-probability sample) reports data on 8–12 year olds suggesting that 12.6% had their own Snapchat account and 11.5% their own TikTok account. (These figures are derived by multiplying the percent of 8–12 year olds who used each app by the percent of those users who reported having their own account on it.)

2. “Under-13” is not one population — own-account ownership rises sharply from 8 to 12

eSafety’s Behind the Screen finds that own-account ownership more than quadruples across the 8–12 band: 16% of 8-year-olds report their own account on at least one service, against 68% of 12-year-olds. These figures are based on 148–202 children per age who had used at least one social media service, so the individual percentages and differences between adjacent ages should be interpreted cautiously. Ofcom’s Children and Parents tracker finds similar age patterns, with own-account ownership of WhatsApp (15% at ages 8–9 to 35% at ages 10–12), TikTok (10% at ages 8–9 to 20% at ages 10–12), and Snapchat (9% at ages 8–9 to 21% at ages 10–12) all increasing from 8–9 to 10–12. Thus, a study whose under-13 band starts at 10 (eSafety Digital Use) or is effectively 11–12 (ABCD) is measuring a different population from one starting at 8. Band width is one reason two studies can disagree; they also differ by country, instrument and year, so differences between studies cannot be attributed to age alone.

eSafety, Behind the Screen, Figure 7 p.55 (printed p.54). Bases 148–202 per age, of children who had used at least one service — not of all children of that age.

eSafety — Behind the Screen, Figure 6 p.54 (printed p.53) — also finds that a parent’s or carer’s account is a common way for 8–12s to reach these services. Among 8–12s who use any of them, 54% said they use a parent’s or carer’s account, 36% that they have at least one account of their own, 27% that they use at least one service without an account, and 5% a sibling’s or friend’s.

Limitations and areas for future work

1. Surveys rely on self-reported data

Every figure on this page comes from a child answering a question about themselves. None is measured against ground truth — the accounts actually present on a device, or app-side records. The direction of any bias is not obvious: eSafety flags that children may under-report use they think they are not supposed to have, while the same instruments cannot measure a child who does not recognize an app by the name shown. Going forward, it would be valuable to correlate self-report with observed data.

2. Being precise about “use” matters

Any use — including logged-out, or on a parent’s account — is a different quantity from having an account, both for policy and potentially for risk. For example, for logged-out usage, stranger contact may be less of a risk; logged-in usage may enable algorithmic personalization, more targeted advertising, and (depending on the user age associated with the account), age-specific safety protections. The studies on this page do not measure these differences in risk. Only three studies measure own-account access directly — eSafety Behind the Screen, Ofcom Children and Parents and ABCD. Going forward, it would be valuable to measure the type of use consistently, including specific measures on own-account access.

3. There is limited tracking of underage use over time

In the US, ABCD is the only probability source that asks about accounts, and its fieldwork is 2019–2021, so it is now five years old. Thorn runs annual tracking on a fixed instrument but asks about use, not account-ownership, so it cannot directly track the more specific quantity that has added policy relevance. Ofcom’s Children’s User Ages tracker has four waves and measures use and account ownership, but its survey population is profile holders of any of a set of apps (vs. the overall population). Going forward, it would be valuable to measure underage use repeatedly, in consistent ways, that allow for population-level estimates.

4. There are limited probability samples and estimates of uncertainty

ABCD is a probability cohort, but it was conducted over five years ago, and its platform list omits Discord and Roblox entirely. Common Sense is a probability panel but only covers five apps and does not ask about accounts. The largest and most current sources — including both Ofcom trackers and both eSafety surveys — are non-probability panels. None of the seven publishes a margin of error on a per-app under-13 cell. Going forward, it would be valuable to have larger probability samples, comparisons between probability- and non-probability samples, and consistent reporting of uncertainty.

5. There is inconsistent coverage of age bands and apps

The under-13 age bands vary across studies: 8–9, 8–12, 9–12, 10–12 and, for ABCD, effectively 11–12. Since there are major differences in account usage by year of age, it’s important to have consistent age-bands and per-year reporting. App coverage is also uneven: across the seven studies, only Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook appear in all seven. And there is very limited coverage of emergent AI apps like ChatGPT or Gemini. Given policy relevance, it’s also important to be able to distinguish between U13-specific experiences: accounts on TikTok’s Under 13 Experience, YouTube Kids, and Messenger Kids need to be separated from accounts on TikTok, YouTube, and Messenger. Going forward, it would be valuable to have common age bands (with per-age-year reporting) and a standardized, regularly-updated list of apps that can distinguish between U13-specific experiences.

Studies included

The studies above other than COST allow for reporting on the share of all children in that study’s band that report usage of an app, as published or as derived. ABCD does not publish its exact 11–12 sample size, but its overall sample contains 10,092 adolescents and the paper reports separate under-13 results, so it is included under the assumption that its 11–12 sample was >100.

COST is included based on Ofcom's published figure suggesting their data are reported on a denominator of all children aged 8-12; we were unable to independently reconcile this with their survey instrument, which suggests COST may exclude children reporting no app, website, or online game use in the previous four weeks. See COST’s sources and figures below.

What each app’s own terms say

Here, we provide an overview of app-specific age policies across three jurisdictions: the United States, the UK, and Australia.

As of August 1, 2026, of the 25 apps measured on this page whose terms we hold, 17 set a floor of 13 or above in all three jurisdictions, so under-13 use of them is prohibited everywhere the studies reach. The remaining 8 either permit under-13 use by some route, or leave it unclear.

This table is for policies current as of August 1, 2026. We believe that these classifications also apply to under-13 use during the 2019–2026 period of the studies covered here, but were not able to fully verify every policy’s history for the period. In some cases minimum age requirements have moved up above 13 since the 2019–2026 period, and where a floor has moved down it has stayed at or above 13, so the classification is unchanged — WhatsApp’s UK floor, for example, was 16 until February 2024 and is 13 today. We are not aware of a case that moved an app between the two groups. The one exception is TikTok’s US Under-13 experience, which went live in February 2019. If we have missed a change that would move an app between the two groups, please tell us.

Table 1: Apps which prohibit under-13 use in all 3 jurisdictions

Table 2: Apps which permit some under-13 use or leave it unclear

Each floor is taken from the operator’s own published document rather than from secondary reporting. Apps measured on this page that carry no sourced floor are absent from these tables rather than assigned one. What the law requires, as opposed to what the operators say in their terms of service or policies, is a separate question and is not covered here. Both tables are a snapshot as of August 1, 2026, not a complete policy history: earlier versions were not checked app by app.