Online safety laws have failed to protect children in UK, Ofcom admits Source: The Guardian

 

The Guardian newspaper reports that the UK Online Safety Laws, designed to protect children online are failing. The report states that the regulations failed to limit the proportion of children suffering harm from social media, the UK’s online regulator has admitted, in an assessment branded “staggering” by campaigners.

OFCOM, the UK regulator for reported that 'at a total level there was no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content over the first nine months after the children’s safety duties came into force in July 2025'. 

This makes for disappointing reading  but it is clear that governments can only ngo so far in a fairly unregulated world. Once one site or online service is dealt with others pop up to replace them. 

It is true that government action in a number of countries have applied pressure to some major players to take more responsibility for what appears on their platforms their actions have not been sufficient to solve the problems that exist for children online. 

Parents clearly still have a critical roll in keeping their families safe bu monitoring what they are doing, who they are communicating with, and building family relationships which ensure that children share their concerns and what they are doing online.

Read the full story here.

 

UK watchdogs urged to tackle suicide social media content after death of girl, 14 Source: The Guardian

 

 

A new report in the Guardian Newspaper describes the death of a14-year-old schoolgirl after TikTok served her suicide content has resuklted in demands that the UK watchdogs should crack down on  what the describe as “toxic” social media feeds.

Melanie Dawes, the chief executive of the regulator Ofcom, told parliament “We do not see a safety culture from these large social media companies … they are very slow to acknowledge that there are risks of criminal action, child grooming and also some of these issues of the way the algorithms feed suicide and self-harm material.” She added that “trust they can clean up their own services is simply not there”.

No doubt the UK regulator OFCOM will take the necessary steps to try to address these concerns as the Internet Safety Act strengthens over time.

 Read the full article here. 

 

‘Stranger Danger’ tops parents’ online gaming worries Source: UK OFCOM

 

This report from the UK Telecoms regulator OFCOM covering concerns of parents regarding strangers communicating with their children through online games

This comes as more than half (55%) of children who game online say they play with people they have never met offline at least sometimes, while one in five (20%) do so all or most of the time they play.

Talking to strangers (64%) ranks ahead of parental concerns about bullying by other players (60%), seeing inappropriate content such as violence, bad language or disturbing material (59%), and pressure to make in-game purchases (51%).

OFCOM has launched a programme to support parents to help keep their children safe online. The programme, called 'Power Up' is available on the OFCOM site here. 

Read the full report here. 

 

 

 

Parental Screen Time and Children’s Screen Habits Source: Digital Parenting Lab

 

 

Not a News item as such but this Blog post does make interesting reading. The post explores the issues faced by parents in the modern internet age, beset as we are, by mobile devices, interactive games and social media.

The post discusses how typical parents use mobile devices to babysit their children or as rewards for certain behaviour. It goes on to consider the perils of too much screen time and impact of too much time spent by young children looking at screens.

The blog post invites a continued debate about such issues and encourage parents to discuss issues with others faced with the same issues and concerns.

 Read the full post here. 

 

Children's online feeds telling them 'how they should look and behave' Source: Sky News

 

A survey undertaken by Plan International UK, a charity which works to advance girls' equality would suggest that more than two-thirds of children surveyed have regularly seen content telling them how to look, dress and behave - and which careers and interests to pursue, according to research.

A charity questioned 1,440 seven to 17-year-olds and found seven in 10 girls (70%) and more than two-thirds of boys (67%) encountered such messages online.  Six in 10 (62%) young people also said they wanted social media companies to do more to remove harmful content.

The charity set up six fake TikTok accounts and found content for 13-16-year-olds became "clearly gendered" within just 20 minutes and could expose kids to "increasingly specific and harmful gendered content" after less than two hours of scrolling. 

The report describes how messages and content target girls with messages about how they should look and how they should live. Such pressure on young minds sets up unrealistic challenges to change the way they look and live.

Read more about this story here.