Girls as young as nine say adults are getting digital support fundamentally wrong, according to new study

Despite the best intentions of parents and teachers, support is routinely experienced as dismissive, scripted or simply out of touch, leaving young people to make sense of one of the most emotionally charged aspects of their digital lives largely on their own. 

In a study, published in Children & Society, researchers spoke with girls, aged 9 to 15 across schools in southeast England. The team ran nine workshops that explored how girls navigate influencer culture and what support from adults actually looks and feels like. What emerged was a clear and consistent message girls do not want more rules, more reassurance or more risk warnings - they want to be listened to. 

School lessons on social media were described as formulaic and one-sided, focused on dangers while ignoring the creativity, community and identity that make influencer culture meaningful to young people. At home, parental and carer responses, however well-meaning, often missed the mark entirely. Reassurances such as "you look beautiful" or "everyone goes through it" were experienced not as comfort but as minimising. Attempts by parents to empathise by drawing on their own experiences repeatedly backfired, with girls pointing out that today's digital world has no equivalent in anything their parents grew up with – even though some of those feelings may still be shared. 

The research team conducted qualitative workshops across three age groups, Years 5 to 6, 7 to 8 and 9 to 10, using a participatory approach that asked girls to bring their own examples of influencers and guide the discussions themselves. Data was analysed thematically to identify patterns in how girls experience and imagine adult support. 

Dr Robyn Muir, lead author of the study and Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Surrey, said: 

"Girls are not rejecting adult involvement, they are asking to be met as partners. They want emotional safety, not emotional management. What we found is that the well-meaning impulse to reassure, advise or fix actually shuts the conversation down before it has started. Active listening is not a passive act. It is the foundation everything else has to be built on." 

The findings push back against dominant policy responses that reach for restriction and control, including calls to ban smartphones in schools. While such measures may have limited value in specific circumstances, no amount of screen time regulation addresses the emotional and relational needs girls are clearly expressing. 

The research calls for a fundamental shift in how adults approach digital wellbeing, moving away from scripted risk-prevention lessons toward emotionally responsive teaching, giving educators space to engage in relational pedagogy and creating spaces where girls feel genuinely safe to speak.  

Dr Emily Setty, co-author of the study and Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Surrey, said: 

"Girls actually resist the idea that adults are inherently out of touch. They drew parallels between their own TikTok habits and their parents' use of Facebook. The common ground is there. But adults have to come to those conversations with curiosity and humility rather than control. That shift is entirely possible; it just requires us to take what girls are telling us seriously." 

ENDS 

Note to editors 

• For interviews with Dr Robyn Muir and Dr Emily Setty, please contact: mediarelations@surrey.ac.uk 
• The full study has been published in: Children & Society