Children 8 and younger spend more than two hours a week online shopping: study

There are at least 100 toy shopping carts on Amazon, including from popular brands like Little Tykes and Melissa & Doug, reflecting a long-held belief among many parents that pretend shopping is a valuable form of play. It's all fun and games until an eight-year-old on Dad's iPhone puts a toy shopping cart in Amazon's virtual shopping cart.

A new “Kid Commerce” report shared exclusively with Retail Brew from WebPurify, a content moderation service, asked parents how much time their kids spend on e-commerce sites—either just browsing or actually purchasing—and the results might surprise (and baffle) you:

• Children 8 years old and younger spend an average of 2.48 hours a week shopping online, more than children aged 9 to 12 (2.16 hours) or 13–18 (2.27 hours).
• 16% of parents think their children are addicted to online shopping.

The data, which WebPurify collected through Censuswide, reflects interviews with 1,001 US parents with children 18 or younger.

Tween a rock and a hard place: Nearly three out of four (72%) parents of tweens (aged 9–12) didn’t feel comfortable with their progeny making unsupervised e-commerce purchases. Among parents of teens 13–18, considerably fewer (37%) were uncomfortable with Junior making unsupervised online purchases.

One in five parents said their child has bought an item inappropriate for their age online.

As for the products parents fear their children will buy online, it will come as no surprise that 21% of parents are afraid their kids will buy sexual health products like sex toys or contraceptives, followed by expensive luxury items (19%) and lingerie or other age-inappropriate clothing (16%).

Parent trap: Parents also see some value in their kids shopping online. More than a third (34%) said their kids’ frequent online shopping has taught them money management skills.

Other parents acknowledged that in some ways, their kids are more savvy about e-commerce than they are. One in four parents admitted that their offspring are more adept at online shopping, while 19% said their child has intervened to stop them from falling for online scams or buying a fake product.