Children as young as four are being allowed to surf the web unsupervised.
The survey of more than 2,000 parents shows how rapidly attitudes to the internet have shifted in little more than a decade.
It also raises fresh fears over the online safety of children growing up in Britain.
The
poll found that, on average, parents with children under the age of six
now only wait until they are four-and-a-half before they leave them to
go online without supervision.
Whilst
many will simply be watching cartoons on iPads or smartphones, others
are bound to stumble across unsuitable websites and videos.
What
is more, millions of households have done nothing to limit the kinds of
websites their children can access at home, according to the research.
Around the
same number believe their children are far more tech-savvy than them,
while a fifth of British parents worry that their own impoverished
technology skills could be putting their children at risk.
However, access to online porn is not the only danger of having too much internet access too young.
Psychologists claim it can interfere with children’s sleep, and adversely affect their concentration at school.
One in ten parents of teenagers worry that their children have ‘overshared’ on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter – potentially leaving photographs and comments that could one day deter a future employer.
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