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Family Kids & Youth – Market Research and Consultancy

Family Kids & Youth is a leading global research agency that focuses entirely on the lives of children and young people, their parents, carers, and teachers. We particularly specialise in research and consultancy on digital media, play, children’s wellbeing and the developmental stages of children and adolescents.

MRS Evidence Matters Company Partner logo The research team has postgraduate qualifications in psychology, child development and sociology from some of the top universities. We work with fmcg, technology, retail and media companies, as well as government departments and universities. We regularly hold workshops for clients across the world and provide robust ad hoc quantitative and qualitative research and literature reviews. Our clients appreciate the informed insight we bring to projects and our skill in communicating research findings in clear and creative ways.

Much of our work is international, and in the last 4 years we’ve carried out international work for Nike, Warner Media, and IKEA. We have worked regularly with IKEA for the last 10 years, and run the IKEA Children’s Advisory Panel in China, Germany and the UK with 6–14-year-olds.

Areas of research we cover

Play

Digital

Family

Education

Adolescence

FKY News

Nearly half of online grooming in the UK takes place on Snapchat

Recent police data shared with the NSPCC reveals that Snapchat is the most commonly used platform for online grooming in the UK, with nearly 50% of recorded cases of sexual communication with children occurring on the app. Over 7,000 such offences were reported in the year leading up to March 2024, marking a record high since the law was established in 2017.
Becky Riggs from the National Police Chief’s Council described the data as “shocking” and emphasised the urgent need for tech companies to prioritise child safety. Despite Snapchat’s claims of a “zero tolerance” policy toward exploitation, concerns about the app’s design persist. The platform’s features, such as messages that disappear after 24 hours, complicate tracking inappropriate behaviour and make it easier for predators to exploit young users. The gender of the victims of grooming offences was not always recorded by police, but of the cases where it was known, four in five victims were girls. Jess Phillips, minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said social media companies “have a responsibility to stop this vile abuse from happening on their platforms”. With the upcoming Online Safety Act set to enforce stricter regulations on social media platforms, companies will be required to implement measures to prevent grooming and report illegal content. Media regulator Ofcom who will enforce the rules said: “We’re prepared to use the full extent of our enforcement powers against any companies that come up short when the time comes.” Read more here.

Early use of tablets found to create difficulty in emotional regulation for young children

A study looking into the use of tablet devices amongst young children finds 3½ year olds who use them are more often frustrated or angry by the time they are 4½ years old, compared to other children the same age. This is associated with a likelihood for children to spend more screentime at age 5½, with children having ‘tech tantrums’ as a result of their device usage being restricted. The study found that a 75 minute increase in tablet use was connected to a 22% increase in frustration and anger in children approximately one year later. The research, carried out in Canada during COVID-19, monitored 315 pre-school children at age 3½ in 2020, and followed them up when they were 4½, and 5½, with analysis carried out October-December 2023. The preschool age is an important time for children to develop and master emotional regulation skills, and screentime can prevent interaction with peers or carers. Authors of the study point out that Covid restrictions may have added to young children’s use of tablets, as well as parents’ tendency to allow their children to be entertained by screens, which has now become the norm. They suggest that parents could be encouraged instead to prompt more make believe play, shared book-reading, and physical activities, and to avoid the use of screens to counteract outburst of anger and frustration. Full findings can be found here.

IKEA Play Report

We have run many research projects for IKEA, including the IKEA Play Report, thought to be the world's largest research study on child development, parenting, family life and the importance of play.

Expertise and Experience

An area we have particular expertise in is mental health and wellbeing. We worked with the DfE to look at learners aged 16-19 and the effect of Coronavirus on their wellbeing. The report can be found here.

We carried out extensive research with 7–21-year-olds ‘The Real Britain: Youth’ on behalf of OMD and News International looking at every aspect of young people’s lives, including SEND, those with English as a second language, and young people from deprived areas of the UK. Other recent work includes research across the UK on behalf of UK communications regulator Ofcom, looking at children’s behaviour online.

Market Research Consultancy

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