Ofcom says 1 in 5 minutes kids spend on major apps happens after 9pm - here’s what it means for your scheduling and safety playbook

Ofcom’s latest annual snapshot of children’s media habits lands a clear signal: late-night usage isn’t fringe. The regulator reports that roughly a fifth of kids’ time on YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok and WhatsApp falls between 9pm and 5am, with many young users themselves voicing “brain rot” worries. Strip away the moral panic and you’re left with a practical reality for social teams: minors are active in the late hours, and that shifts when content meets its youngest audience. The key takeaway here is not that kids are online (we knew that), but where the daypart concentration sits - and how that intersects with algorithmic distribution, ad delivery, and safeguarding obligations.

What this means for creators: evening and late-night posts can encounter a sizable under-18 audience, which may influence early velocity and downstream reach. Balance timing for performance with responsibility - avoid “up late?” hooks and consider enabling audience restrictions or age-gating where available. Worth noting for brands: review dayparting, frequency caps and age targeting on UK campaigns, especially those likely to spill into teen feeds after 9pm. Night-time community management matters too; if your channels attract younger users, make sure moderation coverage and escalation paths don’t clock off at 6pm. The bigger picture: this data arrives as Ofcom rolls out the UK’s Online Safety Act, keeping a spotlight on child risk mitigation and design choices like notifications, bedtime reminders and default screen-time controls. Expect platform policies and enforcement around youth protections to remain a front-burner issue. The practical move now is to audit your posting calendar against audience age and time-of-day analytics, tighten brand-safety settings for after-hours impressions, and align creative with wellbeing-friendly cues (quiet, non-urgent, no FOMO). In short, optimize for performance - and for perception. Late-night attention is real, but so is scrutiny.