A set of new regulations from Ofcom have come into effect, requiring technology and social media companies to implement age checks if there is a risk of children seeing harmful content on their site.
This means that users will now have to prove their age when trying to access certain content or sites online.
What harmful content does this regulation include?
The changes mean that sites and apps must use highly effective ‘age gating’ methods to identify which users are children, and then prevent them from accessing content such as:
- pornography
- self-harm
- suicide
- eating disorder content
Other steps introduced today
As well as preventing children from encountering harmful content, Ofcom’s Codes also require steps to be taken to protect children from dangerous challenges, misogynistic, violent, hateful or abusive material, and online bullying.
Although a large number of apps and sites already disallow this content under their terms of service, we know that this content does still appear online, and regulation has to be an important step in helping make services that are used by and popular with children being suitable for children.
More is still to be done
At Childnet we welcome these changes, and see this as an important first step in protecting children, however there is still more work to be done.
Whilst content online continues to evolve, and the ways that young people are navigating online life is changing, we need to ensure that young people’s voices and experiences are taken into account in order to help ensure that regulation is relevant and effective and meeting the needs of young users of technology.
Will Gardner OBE, CEO of Childnet and Director of the UK Safer Internet Centre said:
‘This new regulatory regime means that the protections that we provide children and young people offline in relation to age-inappropriate content are now to be implemented online, and we support this step in better protecting children from harmful content online.
Peter Kyle joins Childnet visit
At Childnet young people’s voice is at the heart of everything we do and we think it is vital that with changes like this young people’s opinions are listened to and taken into account.
On the 3rd July, Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, joined the Childnet team on a visit to Beauchamp College in Leicester to hear directly from young people and their parents and carers about their concerns around online safety and to discuss how the Children’s Safety Duties will impact them.
You can hear more about what they had to say in this video:
