British children continue to encounter self-harm, abusive, and pornographic content at unchanged rates nine months into the implementation of the Online Safety Act. Personalized feeds remain the primary vehicle delivering this material, with girls and children with special educational needs or disabilities facing higher exposure to suicide and self-harm imagery. The regulator's restrained posture before MPs has sparked fierce criticism, particularly following a coroner's finding that TikTok algorithms contributed to a 14-year-old girl's death. To counter these persistent harms, ministers are now weighing stricter interventions, including mandatory photo ID checks and a complete social media…
Key points
Personalized recommendation feeds continue to disproportionately steer self-harm and suic…: Personalized recommendation feeds continue to disproportionately steer self-harm and suicide content toward vulnerable youth, particularly girls and disabled children.
Government ministers are preparing more drastic remedies, including mandatory teenage pho…: Government ministers are preparing more drastic remedies, including mandatory teenage photo identification and a social media ban for minors under 16 slated for spring 2027.
Critics insist that online safety protections will remain ineffective without a strict du…: Critics insist that online safety protections will remain ineffective without a strict duty of care and criminal liability for platform executives.
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One thing is clear following last week’s report from the media regulator, Ofcom: the mammoth task of protecting children from online harms has barely begun. Campaigners said that they were dismayed but not surprised that the proportion of children viewing harmful content has stayed the same despite a raft of measures in the Online Safety Act designed to protect them. Research showed that high-priority material including pornography and self-harm, as well as a broader category covering bullying, abuse and the promotion of violence, continued to be encountered regularly in the nine months after new safety duties came into force.
The regulator found that personalised feeds were the main way that such content was presented, and noted that such feeds show different material to boys and girls. Suicide and self-harm content were more commonly seen by girls and children with special educational needs or disabilities. In a grim irony, Ofcom’s report appeared one day after a coroner in Norfolk ruled that suicide imagery viewed on TikTok “may have played a significant part” in the decision by a 14-year-old girl to take…
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