Joint UK & US Statement On Child Protection

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The United Kingdom and the United States share fundamental values and a commitment to democracy and human rights, including privacy and freedom of expression.

Both the United Kingdom and the United States, alongside international partners, are taking steps to support children’s online safety.

To make the Internet safer for children, we should aim to ensure all users have the skills and resources they need to make safe and informed choices online and advance stronger protections for children.

The United States and the United Kingdom intend to work with our national institutions and organisations to support these goals and shared values. To help further these aims, both countries plan to establish a joint children’s online safety working group to advance the aims and principles of this statement.

There are parallels between the child online safety landscape in the United States and the United Kingdom. Smartphone ownership is nearly universal amongst teenagers in both countries. Children in the United States and the United Kingdom actively engage with social media platforms daily. Both governments recognise the significant educational and social benefits technology can provide children and seek to ensure that they can flourish, online and offline.

To ensure these benefits can be maximised, online platforms, including social media companies, have a moral responsibility to respect human rights and put in place additional protections for children’s safety and privacy.

Age-appropriate safeguards, including protections from content and interactions that harm children’s health and safety, are vital to achieve this goal. This includesmMeasures to address and prevent:-

sexual exploitation and abuse
harassment
cyberbullying
content that is abusive (including technology-facilitated gender-based violence)
content that encourages or promotes suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders

The UK government is committed to the online safety of children. The Online Safety Act places clear duties on online platforms to protect children’s safety and put in place measures to mitigate risks.

For example, platforms must use ‘highly effective’ privacy preserving age assurance technologies to prevent children from encountering the most harmful content, including pornography (which includes violent pornography) and content which encourages or promotes suicide.

Platforms also need to proactively tackle the most harmful illegal content and activity. This includes child sexual exploitation and abuse and content which disproportionately affects women and girls, such as harassment, intimate image abuse and controlling or coercive behaviour.

Companies can elect to voluntarily extend these protections to children living across the world to increase the health, safety, and privacy of children.

The US government has taken action to advance children’s online health, safety, and privacy. In 2023, the United States Surgeon General issued a new advisory about the effects social media use has on youth mental health.

Building on this advisory, the US government launched the Kids Online Health and Safety Task Force to advance the health, safety, and privacy of children online, including preventing and mitigating the adverse health effects that children can experience through the use of online platforms.

The US government has also made addressing image-based sexual abuse a core focus of its AI policy, with several actions to promote the safeguarding of AI systems from generating child sexual abuse material included in the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI.

The US government has issued a call to action inviting industry to make voluntary commitments to reduce the generation, dissemination, and monetisation of image-based sexual abuse.

"We should continue to advocate for increased transparency from online platforms, including clear and accessible terms of service and online safety practices. This will assist governments, regulators, independent researchers, and the public to develop a better understanding of the technologies that are shaping children’s lives".

Further independent, public interest research is needed to evaluate the impact of excessive social media and smartphone use on children’s development and enable researchers and policymakers to work towards a robust framework to assess the risks to children at different stages of their childhood and adolescence.

Both countries acknowledge that risk-based and safety, privacy, and inclusivity-by-design approaches throughout design, development, and deployment are fundamental to children’s safety and wellbeing online, alongside increased transparency and accountability from online platforms.

The United Kingdom and the United States will to work together to protect children online through multilateral forums such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Children’s online safety is an issue of global importance. The US anf UK intend to work with international partners to develop and promote common solutions, shared principles, and global standards that prioritise children’s wellbeing and champion a free, open, and secure Internet.

UK Government | White House | White House

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