Parents forced to pay teenagers bills as they rack up gaming expenses online

Aussie teenagers are racking up huge bills online without their parents’ permission, a survey by the Financial Basics Foundation has found.

Foundation chief executive Katrina Birch told Tom Elliott the survey looked at 1,000 parents, and found in some cases parents were forced to cough up thousands of dollars.

“We found 56 per cent of parents have been forced to fit the bill for their teenagers, mostly for data usage, buying in-game purchases,” Katrina said.

“The kids are able to press the button to continue and pay on, the parents are footing the bill because they put their credit or debit cards into the game (at the beginning).

“They don’t understand the implications of that transaction.”

She also said AfterPay is a big problem because, “it means that money is an after-thought and normalises debt”.

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