CHILDREN are being left to "fend for themselves" against dangers such as bullying and grooming in the digital world, it has been claimed.
Anne Longfield, the Children's Commissioner for England, said youngsters spending increasing amounts of time online were not getting the level of support required.
A year-long study - Growing Up Digital - claimed that "much more needs to be done to create a supportive digital environment for children and young people".
Three to four-year-olds spend an of average 8 hours 18 minutes a week online - from watching films to playing games - while 12 to 15-year-olds use the internet for at least 20 hours per week, according to the report.
This "explosion" of time spent online has left parents "hoping that bad things wouldn't happen" because they feel they lack the "capabilities or the capacity" to deal with any issues that arise from their child's internet use, meaning children feel they have to navigate the web without parental support, Ms Longfield said.
The study found that children struggled to understand the "impenetrable" terms and conditions of social media sites.
A group of teenagers was asked to read the terms and conditions of photo-sharing site Instagram - used by 56 per cent of 12 to 15-year-olds - as part of the study, but none were able to fully understand what they meant, the report found.
Ms Longfield said: "There was a clear comeback from the kids themselves saying 'I'm staring at the words but they aren't meaningful to me'."
A law firm condensed and simplified the terms and conditions, leaving many youngsters in the study surprised by what they had signed up to.
Ms Longfield has called on the British government to ensure that a search engine's "right to remove" facility - which applies to EU citizens - remains available to children in the UK after Brexit.
She has also urged the government to appoint a children's digital ombudsman to act as a go-between for children and social media companies.
Ms Longfield said there needed to be a "powerful force that's on the side of children" to act as a mediator for them to get content removed from the internet.
The report further suggested that social media companies should rewrite their terms and conditions so that they could be easily understood by children.
As part of the study, 900 Mumsnet users were asked about their worries with children using the internet.
It found that 73 per cent of parents were concerned about their children accessing inappropriate material online and 54 per cent were afraid of unwanted contact by strangers.
"Parents worry about what happens to their children online with regard to strangers and what children worry about online is what happens to them with regard to people they know or come into contact with - which is where bullying begins to really have an impact in terms of children's online presence," Ms Longfield explained.
The recommendations made in the report would give children and young adults the "resilience, information and power" they need to "open up the internet" without making them "vulnerable to having their personal information captured and monetised by companies", it states.
Ms Longfield said: "Kids need to be resilient, they need to have the information ready to be able to deal with their time online and know what that means for them and they need to have the power to deal with it themselves.
"The concern is that the reality of existence for children and teenagers is increasingly spent amount of time online - and their time online is not regulated, it doesn't have adult presence there to support them and they enter that world without the support and resilience they need to be able to know what it entails and how they can manage their time online successfully."
