What adults should know about how we use the internet – written by 12-year-olds

• Because we see you on your phones and online as much as we spend on ours, its feels unfair when you say we are spending too much time on them

• If you are worried about what we’re looking at online then ask us. Once you were thinking I was watching lots of angry videos but actually I was researching atomic clocks

• Age rules on sites like Tik Tok and Snapchat make no difference, we will say we are older than we actually are because there’s no consequences apart from getting banned.

• When adults are strict about being online and using phones we do listen when they know they are doing it out of care.

• We use the internet for different reasons and different ways than you, we never really go on the internet together which I think would help in letting adults know what we’re really doing.

• We often see bad things online like swearing and being nasty and that, we’ve learnt to just ignore it.

• No one tells us how to use the internet we just play around and find out, things might be real, they might not, we don’t know how to tell.

• No one even adults ever post things without a filter, so we get use to thinking we look rubbish when we don’t use them.

• I like it when adults don’t try to look at what we’re doing all the time, we’re allowed to say things to our friends without them knowing.

• I sometimes don’t like it when my mum posts a photo of me on her Facebook and you get all these random people talking about me. There’s nothing I can do because she posts it without even asking. Adults should ask permission first.