The Price of Kids' Online Spending Sprees
Saw this one originally in a Money magazine article, then followed up on the survey referenced by the author. Rather than repeat the article, I'm mostly showing you screenshots of some of the key data about unauthorized kid shopping online.
Jay LeBlanc
9/15/20252 min read
I will put some links to the original source material at the end, but I'm mostly including screenshots of an infographic created by Achieve and Talker Research to highlight their survey results. Several of these seemed like they would make great discussion starters or talking points:
Resources used . . .
"Caught Your Kid Buying Stuff on Roblox or the App Store? You're Not Alone", Money, Sep 2025, https://money.com/
"From digital dollars to real-world debt: 31% of parents catch their kids on unapproved online shopping sprees", Achieve.com, Sep 2025, https://www.achieve.com/about/press/from-digital-dollars-to-real-world-debt-31-percent-of-parents-catch-their-kids-on-unapproved-online-shopping-sprees
Infographic created for the article/survey - https://www.achieve.com/assets/files/80jeq2aeq4l1/TPuXkbFLUwiHxYLYnEhw7/6c7eb4ddddbf08cd5c4456e01d6bb757/talker-achieve-survey-infographic.pdf
Other Related Articles/Videos . . .
"How to Explain Loot Boxes and In-Game Purchases to Kids", BitDefender, Mar 2025, https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/how-to-explain-loot-boxes-and-in-game-purchases-to-kids
"What to know about kids and video games, ads, and unexpected payments", Federal Trade Commission, Apr 2025, https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2025/04/what-know-about-kids-video-games-ads-unexpected-payments
"Child spends $5k on Amazon by accident - sort of", WTHR-TV, Sep 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so_zbOotYLg
"Who’s responsible for your kids’ unauthorized credit card charges?", CNBC, Aug 2025, https://www.cnbc.com/select/whos-responsible-for-kids-unauthorized-credit-card-charges/