New British Child Protection Regulations
Social media and other Internet platforms will be legally required to block children’s access to harmful content from July 2025, or face massive fines UK’s media regulator Ofcom has announced. And companies must change the algorithms recommending content to younger people and improve age checks.
Ofcom says that its Children's Codes will offer transformational new protections and the final versions have now been published and this will come into force in July 2025.
Platforms which include pornography, or content which encourages self-harm, suicide or eating disorders are among those which must change to prevent children using this content.
Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom Chief Executive, said: “These changes are a reset for children online. They will mean safer social media feeds with less harmful and dangerous content, protections from being contacted by strangers and effective age checks on adult content. Ofcom has been tasked with bringing about a safer generation of children online, and if companies fail to act they will face enforcement.”
Ian Russell, chairman of the Molly Rose Foundation, which was set up in memory of his daughter, who took her own life aged 14, said he was "dismayed by the lack of ambition" in the codes.
The new rules for platforms are subject to parliamentary approval under the Online Safety Act. The regulator says they contain more than 40 practical measures tech firms must take, including:
- Safer feeds: Personalised recommendations are children’s main pathway to encountering harmful content online. Any provider that operates a recommender system and poses a medium or high risk of harmful content must configure their algorithms to filter out harmful content from children’s feeds.
- Effective age checks: The riskiest services must use highly effective age assurance to identify which users are children. This means they can protect them from harmful material, while preserving adults’ rights to access legal content. That may involve preventing children from accessing the entire site or app, or only some parts or kinds of content.
If services have minimum age requirements but are not using strong age checks, they must assume younger children are on their service and ensure they have an age-appropriate experience.
- Fast action: All sites and apps must have processes in place to review, assess and quickly tackle harmful content when they become aware of it.
- More choice and support for children: Sites and apps are required to give children more control over their online experience. This includes allowing them to indicate what content they don’t like, to accept or decline group chat invitations, to block and mute accounts and to disable comments on their own posts.
- Easier reporting and complaints: Children will find it straightforward to report content or complain, and providers should respond with appropriate action. Terms of service must be clear so children can understand them.
- Strong governance: All services must have a named person accountable for children’s safety, and a senior body should annually review the management of risk to children.
Ofcom said it has "the power to impose fines and, in very serious cases ,apply for a court order to prevent the site or app from being available in the UK... Today’s Codes of Practice are the basis for a new era of child safety regulation online. We will build on them with further consultations, in the coming months, on additional measures to protect users from illegal material and harms to children.”
The children's charity NSPCC welcomed the Codes,although they have called for Ofcom to go further, especially when it came to private messaging apps which are often encrypted, meaning platforms cannot see what is being sent.
Ofcom | BBC | Guardian | Irish News | Yahoo | Radio News
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