Children travel abroad far more often than their parents did when young, a survey has showed.

And today’s youngsters also go to far more destinations overseas than their mothers and fathers did when they were children, the poll by Aviva Travel Insurance found.

The survey was based on responses from 1,006 parents with children aged 6-16.

While only 39 per cent of parents had been abroad before the age of 16, as many as 94 per cent of their children travelled overseas before this age.

Just two per cent of parents had been to North America when young, compared with 28 per cent of their children. While only 26 per cent of parents had been to Europe as a child, 73 per cent have taken their own children to the continent.

When the parents who were polled were children, just 30 per cent of mothers and fathers took offspring overseas with them, but this figure has now risen to 50 per cent.

A total of eight per cent of parents have taken children to North Africa, seven per cent to Asia and six per cent to the Caribbean. Aviva’s travel insurance product manager Jerry Finch said: “It is often said that the world is getting smaller and nowhere is the huge increase in the extent of our travel more apparent than the distances and range of places that people have been to before the age of 16. “Children nowadays are better travelled and have experienced a wider range of cultures than ever before.”