Cyber Vulnerabilities and Parental Trust Among Youth in India

The internet has become an indispensable part of our daily lives. It has brought together communities, connected them to create and innovate. Internet access and usage in the world has been proliferating year by year.


Recognising the need to put forth the user experiences and the correlation of young social media users and their parents’ reactions, Social Media Matters conducted a research during the COVID-19 lockdown to study the vulnerabilities of the young users using social media platforms. The study holds extra weightage as we have also recorded the responses of parents who are trying to enter the sphere of the virtual spaces and deal with the vulnerabilities of their children.

Cyber Vulnerabilities and Parental Trust Among Youth in India, the research looks at the experiences of the users through the safety lens and has tried to gather information on the variables leading to safety issues. We have also tried to look at the perspective of parents who are grappling to understand technology and also, trying to resolve the issues that their children are facing.

Some of the most staggering facts and figures that the study reflects are stated below:

1. 43% of the respondents are not able to locate the exact place to lodge complaints about online crimes
2. Almost 50% of the underage young users do not have any parental oversight over their online behaviour
3. 30% of the respondents accepted that they have discussed personal matters online

Social Media Matters has deep dived into the users experiences with this research and wishes to escalate the discourse on safe virtual spaces for everyone across the globe. We believe that together we can think of solutions which can first look into the issues, recognise them and innovate grievance redressal mechanisms along with building strategies to try and reach the root cause.

Read the detailed survey report here: Cyber Vulnerabilities and Parental Trust Among Youth in India