Children’s accounts ‘targeted in 24 hours’

SOCIAL media accounts linked to children were “directly targeted” with graphic content within as little as 24 hours of being created, a new report into online safety warns.

It says accounts created for the study based on real children as young as 13 were served content around eating disorders, selfharm and sexualised images.

The study from children’s safety group the 5Rights Foundation and the Children’s Commissioner,

Dame Rachel de Souza, inset, said the research was “alarming and upsetting” and called for mandatory rules on how online services are designed to be introduced.

An Age Appropriate Design Code will come into force in September, with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) able to levy fines and other punishments to services that fail to build in, by design, new safety standards around protecting the data of users aged under 18.

However, 5Rights said more must be done to integrate broader child safety into online platforms from the design process onwards.

It says that, despite knowing the age of younger users, social media platforms were allowing them to be contacted – unsolicited – by adults as well as recommending potentially damaging content.

Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were the social media platforms named in the report, which was carried out with the research firm Revealing Reality. All three companies have been contacted for comment. “The results of this research are alarming and upsetting. But just as the risks are designed to the system, they can be designed out,” 5Rights chair Baroness Kidron said.

“It is time for mandatory design standards for all services that impact or interact with children, to ensure their safety and wellbeing in the digital world. “In all other settings, we offer children commonly agreed protections. A publican cannot serve a child a pint, a retailer may not sell them a knife, a cinema may not allow them to view an R18 film, a parent cannot deny them an education, and a drug company cannot give them an adult dose of medicine.”

Online safety campaigner Ian Russell, who set up a foundation in his daughter Molly’s name after she took her own life after viewing suicide content online, said the research showed “how algorithmic amplification actively connects children to harmful digital content, sadly as I know only

too well, sometimes with tragic consequences”.