Your Kids Still Raid the Pantry. They Just Do It Digitally Now—and You May Not Realize How Much They’re Spending

Key Takeaways

• Children, who spend more time online, may be shaping their parents' spending decisions more than adults realize, surveys found.
• Kids report independently ordering from food delivery apps more than adults say they do, the consulting firm said.

Everyone knows children cost money. But parents may not notice some of the ways kids boost their bills—from ordering snacks on DoorDash to persuading them to buy pricer brands.

Today’s 7- to 14-year-olds have more influence over their family’s spending than prior generations, said Ali Furman, consumer markets industry leader for PWC, an accounting and consulting firm. Children spend an average of 3.6 hours a day on screens for recreational purposes, according to recent PWC research, where they're steeped in in digital commerce and marketing messages they relay to the rest of the household without adults realizing it, Furman said.

This shows up in kids' purchasing behavior, too. Generations of students have snuck candy and crackers from the cupboard while their parents were at work, but that after-school tradition may have more of a financial impact in the era of delivery apps. Some 14% of parents said their 7- to 14-year-olds order from food apps on their own, but 25% of children that age said they independently use food apps, according to surveys PWC conducted in early 2026. Furman surmises that they may be ordering things like snacks and desserts even more than they order meals.

Why This News Matters to Investors

Consumer brands want to build relationships with consumers at a young age. Kids have many more years of buying ahead of them, and businesses may later be able to capitalize on their nostalgia for brands or products.

“Kid are using GrubHub, Uber Eats and DoorDash (DASH) as the new modern way of raiding a pantry,” said Furman.

PWC found other perception gaps. Kids said they independently ordered from shopping apps and social media by about 5 percentage points more than parents said they did, surveys found. A Talker Research study published in September found that about a third of parents had found a child making an online purchase they hadn't authorized, with an average cost of $170. Roughly a fifth said the cost they found was closer to $300.

Children are not necessarily trying to be sneaky, Furman said. Many were given broad access to devices during COVID, when ordering an array of things online was quite common, she said, so they may believe they're behaving in standard ways. And parents juggling busy professional and personal lives may think comparatively little about the details of spending or credit-card statements, she said.

In this environment, kids can have more sway on shopping decisions than adults realize. More than half of kids said they add items to online shopping carts for their parents to consider, but fewer parents acknowledged reviewing carts for suggestions from their children.

“This is the most commercially fluent generation we have ever seen,” Furman said, "influencing a household's buying" way earlier than ever before.