Taking responsibility for child safety online
Authors: None The Lancet Digital Health
Journal: The Lancet Digital Health (2024)

In October, 2023, the UK Online Safety Act was passed. It intends to tackle harmful online content through increased enforcement by the UK communications regulator, Ofcom, and places legal responsibility on technology companies to prevent and remove such content. The aims of the Act are in line with Goal 3 of the UNICEF strategic plan for 2022–25, which envisages that every child and adolescent is protected from violence, exploitation, and abuse. In the UK, several high-profile failings, including the role social media platforms played in the suicide of a British teenager, have demonstrated that online safety for children needs to be treated as an immediate priority. The Act shows the UK Government is willing to prioritise children's safety online, but how does it compare to other international efforts and will it be enough to protect children from harm and abuse online? The EU's Digital Services Act, which passed a year earlier than the UK Act, takes a broad approach in that it treats all illegal content equally; the UK Act instead applies differing obligations to different types of content. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the nation's internet regulator, takes a more extreme approach than its European counterparts and calls for service and technology providers to impose strict time limits on internet usage for children, placing a large onus on these companies to impose strict time limits. Increased responsibility placed on technology companies by regulators has also led to criticism. WhatsApp, which boasts end-to-end encryption to ensure privacy for users, threatened to pull its services from the UK because the Act allows Ofcom to search private conversations for child sexual abuse material. Although companies say they are addressing safety concerns, they continue to host extremely harmful content: a freedom-of-information request from the UK children's charity NSPCC showed that, in 2021–22, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (all owned by Meta) were used in 33% of child abuse crimes on social media. Technology companies hosting potentially dangerous platforms have a moral duty to make them safe, and, currently, if they do not comply with the Act, they face heavy financial and possibly custodial penalties. However, the desire to boost user traffic and engagement with content posted on their platforms, and ultimately to generate profit, might hinder compliance. Besides the tighter regulation that the Act enables, what other approaches could protect the safety of children online? Although companies have the utmost responsibility to protect their vulnerable users, parents and guardians can get involved by monitoring their child's internet usage. A Finnish study by Paakkari and colleagues including adolescents aged 11–15 years found that problematic social media use was most common among those with low parental monitoring. Therefore, parents should introduce digital devices as tools rather than toys and teach them to use these tools responsibly; this could be through education on identifying harmful content, discussing risk associated with engaging with them, and supervising usage. Findings from a systematic review on education interventions to prevent online child sexual abuse showed the necessity of educating not only children, but also their parents and educators. It is increasingly important for educators to have the most up-to-date knowledge of technology devices and risks associated with their use, given the speed of advancing technology and, therefore, means for children to be exposed to harmful content changes. The Finnish study also found that low health and media literacy was associated with problematic social media use; therefore, educators also have a responsibility to improve health and media literacy during school. Although the UK Government provides guidance on how schools can ensure students stay safe online, it is not a compulsory part of the curriculum; making it the law would complement the Act in making the internet safer for children. Legalisation of the Act follows other international efforts to protect children online, and it represents progress following previous calls for government-led regulation. But a more proactive approach by companies that harbour harmful content must be taken, while at the same time balancing freedom of speech and a right to privacy for online usage. An appropriate balance is yet to be determined. In the meantime, educators and parents should continue to teach and educate their children about online safety. Finally, more robust research into harms surrounding children's health in relation to online usage is imperative.