Internet Matters publishes guides, not independent verdicts

The short answer

Internet Matters describes itself as an independent, not-for-profit organisation whose age-by-age guides and setup instructions are a useful starting point, not a neutral audit of any one product. Its pages organise advice by age, issue, activity and platform, and separately name specific companies it has worked with on individual projects. Read a guide for what it covers, and check who was involved in producing it before treating it as free of any commercial connection.

What the evidence says

The advice hub organises content four ways: by age band, from early years through to teens; by issue, including cyberbullying, inappropriate content, grooming, online hate, screen time and sexting; by online activity, such as gaming, social media, streaming and learning; and by specific apps, devices and networks. A separate parental-controls section lists step-by-step setup instructions across more than a hundred named services and devices. The about-us page states the organisation was established in 2014 to make sure positive action is taken on children's online safety and wellbeing, describing its strategy as education, influence and collaboration with industry and the safety sector. That page names specific project collaborations, including a console guide with Electronic Arts, a research report with TikTok, a resource with Tesco Mobile, a campaign with Virgin Media O2, and research on neurodivergent gaming with Roblox. It also states that nine in ten parents who visit the site report taking positive action afterwards.

For context

The about-us page names individual projects rather than publishing a complete funder list or governance structure, so a visitor cannot tell from that page alone which companies provide ongoing support and which are credited for one named piece of work. Several named collaborators operate in the same industries, gaming, social platforms and mobile networks, that the advice covers; the page discloses the project but does not explain it as a funding relationship. The nine-in-ten figure is reported without a description of how it was measured, so it reads as the organisation's own reported outcome rather than an independently verified statistic. None of this means the advice is wrong, only that its funding and its content sit closer together than a fully independent test would.

A practical next step

Before following a specific setup guide, you could check whether that page credits a company partner, then compare its recommended settings against the platform's own current help pages, since menus change more often than guidance pages are updated.

• Does this guide credit a company partner, and does that change how you read its recommendations?
• Does the age-band advice match how your child actually uses the platform, rather than only their age?
• Have you checked the guide's steps against the platform's current settings, in case the interface has changed?

Internet Matters is transparent about organising its advice by age and issue and about naming some companies it works with project by project. It is less explicit, on these pages, about its overall funding picture, worth keeping in mind alongside the practical value of the guides themselves.