FOI REF: FOI/2022/4672
You asked
How many youths aged above 10 involved in any crime have a social media account(s) over a period of 10 years maximum?
Any information you can provide with youths/social media action would be of use?
we said
Thank you for your request.
Our crime publications and data concern crime as it is experienced by victims, or as it is recorded by police. Unfortunately, we do not produce statistics or details on the offender. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) are primarily responsible for data on offenders and can be contacted at ESD@justice.gov.uk.
However, we do collect some information regarding youths and social media which may interest you. Our main source of child data is the Children's 10 to 15s Crime Survey for England and Wales (CCSEW). We introduced new questions to the CCSEW in the year ending March 2020 regarding their online activity and social networking usage. You may be interested in the following publications and accompanying data tables which use these questions.
In November 2020, we published our Online bullying in England and Wales: year ending March 2020 article. This includes estimates of the prevalence and nature of online bullying among children using data from the CCSEW.
In February 2021, we published our Children's online behaviour in England and Wales: year ending March 2020 article. This details the prevalence and nature of online activity among children, using data from the CCSEW.
Unfortunately, these publications do not include breakdowns of social networking use by crime victimisation. However, this analysis is something that could be created for you via our bespoke services. These services are subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources, and agreement of costs. We recommend that you contact the crime team directly in order to discuss your data requirements in more detail via the following email address: crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk. Please note that these data are currently only available for the year ending March 2020 as the CCSEW was suspended on 17 March 2020 because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and did not resume until April 2022.