UK: Online Harm to Children Unchanged Since New Online Safety Act Measures
The Facts
- Ofcom's first statutory report on content harmful to children, published this week, found "no significant change" in the incidence or severity experienced online in the nine months after the Online Safety Act 2023's children's safety duties took effect in July 2025.
- Survey data from March to April 2026 showed 14% of 11 to 17-year-olds reported seeing suicide or self-harm content in the previous four weeks, while 23% reported eating disorder content and 49% reported hate content.
- Ofcom claimed that age assurances were helping keep children off pornography services, with most of the U.K.'s largest such sites running age checks by July 2026. The share of children encountering pornography on social media, however, had not shifted.
Sources Split
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The Spin
Left narrative
Holding tech giants to account takes years, not weeks, and early wins such as age checks on inappropriate sites, a geo-blocked suicide forum and enforcement against the biggest platforms show the approach is working. Lawsuits from Meta, X and TikTok are proof the rules are biting and companies are feeling the pressure, ensuring that our digital public square remains safe for future generations.
Right narrative
A law sold as the fix for children's online safety has delivered no measurable drop in the harmful content kids actually see, while adults hand over data privacy and freedom of speech, all for nothing. Expanding an untested duty-of-care model with more bans and device-level ID checks only compounds a failure that calls for a fundamental rethink.
