Why parents are paying their children in mobile data, not money, to do their chores

Gone are the days of walking the dog or doing the dishes in return for a few pounds of pocket money: now, children are being paid in data for their mobile phones in order to keep up with their household chores.

Parents are increasingly encouraging their kids to wash the car, do the gardening or tidying up their bedroom with a set amount of data to use on their smartphone, research shows.

One in four parents say they regularly share data with their children as a cheaper reward amid the cost of living crisis, according to a survey of 2,000 adults carried out by EE.

Parents agree that the most valuable chore-for-data should be washing the car, which is worth an average of 173 megabytes of data, enough for 10 minutes of TikTok videos, according to the research.

This is followed by sweeping leaves (158MB) which would allow two hours of music streams, hanging out laundry (150MB), walking the dog (149MB) and tidying their bedroom (147MB) which would each cover streaming music on Spotify for around 1 hour .

‘We’ve never seen the kids so motivated’

Jit Jagita, 42, an IT consultant who lives in Cheshire, started giving “data pocket money” instead of cash to his kids – son Jay, 12, and daughter Ananya, 9 – as he finds it is the most efficient way to get them to help out around the house.

“The kids are often on their phones when they’re out and about, and we realized data top ups were more important to them than pocket money,” he told i.

“Since we started sharing data with them, we’ve never seen them so motivated to unstack the dishwasher and fold the washing. We give them an allowance of about 3GB of data a week if they get all of their chores done.”

As well as offering data instead of money for household chores, Jit and his wife also began rewarding Jay and Ananya for achievements at school.

Jit added: “Jay recently came first in his year in maths, and Ananya was appointed to the school council. We were really proud so we gave them each a whole 30GB of data for the month – a massive amount – and they were delighted with it.

“They mostly use their data to watch YouTube videos, stay in touch with their friends and check social media. They wouldn’t get through all that data, but it gives them a bigger sense of achievement.”

He also said that his two children also take an active interest in monitoring the house’s energy usage and “walk around the house closing doors and switching appliances off” in order to save more money.

“Jay sometimes makes the case when we’re giving him his weekly data allowance that we should chuck him an extra few megabytes for keeping the bills down, and we usually let him get away with it,” Jit explained.

The research also found that parents were using the same incentive to encourage children to keep up energy-saving habits, too, with data used to pay kids for washing up by hand, making sure lights are turned off and keeping doors closed.

It comes as many households are struggling with the cost of living crisis, with higher bills meaning many families have less disposable income to treat their children.

A study carried out by Sky Mobile in November 2022 showed 84 per cent of families with children aged 12 to 16 now offer alternatives to pocket money – bribes in the form of extra screen time, later bedtimes, having friends round, or the ever-reliable sweets , as incentives to do basic chores rather than cash.

Research carried out by Halifax last year found that a third of parents had altered how much they were putting into their children’s piggy banks each week, down to £4.99 in 2022 from £6.48 in 2021.

Sharon Meadows, Director of Broadband and Mobile at EE, said: “Parents know how much children love their data – and how they hate to run out. Our research confirms that pocket money is no longer king, with more than a quarter of parents already sharing data as a reward for chores.”