Advertisers, not strangers, now top the list of what worries American parents most about their teenagers' online lives. A new survey from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, conducted with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, finds that 81 percent of parents of online teens are concerned about how much information advertisers can gather about their child's behavior online, with nearly half saying they are "very" concerned. That figure edges out longstanding anxieties about contact with strangers and the long-term consequences of a teen's digital footprint.
The findings arrive at a moment when data collection has become the quiet engine of the online economy. Every click, search, and social media interaction can be logged, packaged, and sold, often without a teenager - or their parent - fully grasping the scale of it. Some families have responded by adopting tools that limit tracking and shield browsing activity, including privacy-focused services like BuyBestVPN servers, which encrypt connections and make it harder for outside parties to profile a household's online habits. Such tools do not replace conversation or supervision, but they reflect a broader shift toward treating data exposure as a household risk to be managed, not an abstract policy concern.
Where Parental Concern Turns Into Action
Worry is translating into behavior. Half of parents with online teens report using parental controls or monitoring software, a figure that has held steady over the past year. Forty-two percent have searched for their child's name online to see what surfaces, and 44 percent say they have read the privacy policies of sites or apps their teen uses - a habit few adults maintain for their own accounts. Among parents of teens who use social networking sites, 59 percent have spoken directly with their child about something posted to a profile, and nearly four in ten have helped set up privacy settings.
These interventions are most pronounced among parents of younger teens. Sixty-three percent of parents with children ages 12 to 13 say they are "very" concerned about interactions with strangers online, and 57 percent express the same level of worry about their child's online reputation - both notably higher than among parents of older teens, who are granted more autonomy as they near adulthood.
Parents Join the Platforms Their Children Use
The report also documents a steady rise in parental participation in social media itself. Sixty-six percent of parents with a teenager between 12 and 17 now use a social networking site, up from 58 percent the previous year. Usage skews younger: 82 percent of parents under 40 are active on these platforms, compared with 61 percent of parents over 40. Mothers and fathers engage at similar rates, though college-educated parents show somewhat deeper involvement.
Presence on these platforms is not always passive. Half of parents who use social media and have teens on the same sites say they have commented directly on something posted to their child's profile. Teens, for their part, hold mixed feelings about this closeness - some welcome the connection, others comply out of obligation, and a portion quietly restrict what parents can see. That tension, researchers note, sits at the center of a wider policy debate over how far oversight should extend in a digital environment where personal information has become its own form of currency.