The EU Kids Online 2026 comparative study: Children's views, experiences, opportunities and risks in a digital world
Guardii Analysis
A representative survey of 10- to 16-year-olds across 19 European countries documented a sharp deterioration in children's sense of online safety, with the proportion upset by something encountered online in the past month rising from 7 percent in 2020 to 23 percent in the latest survey, and children reporting they feel safe online falling from 65 percent to just 48 percent. Three in ten children encounter hateful messages at least monthly, 40 percent see gory or violent images, and parent engagement fell from 66 percent in 2020 to 50 percent in 2026.
Instead of expecting parents and children to navigate risk alone, anti-grooming and anti-cyberbullying detection that sits at the point of contact can intercept hostile messaging before it reaches the target. Guardii's AI online-safety platform, a Meta Business Partner backed by Startmate, analyzes conversation structure across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms to identify escalation, coercion and sustained targeting as they occur, enabling a parent or school to surface a child in distress without reading every message and allowing urgent cases to escalate rapidly to the right authority.