‘Use health and safety laws to better protect children on social media’

SOCIAL media networks could better protect users from dangerous content, trolls and grooming if they were regulated under health and safety rules, a study found.

Internet law experts say firms such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube and game streaming site Twitch should focus on their “duty of care” to users, especially children. They suggest that by thinking of the internet as a virtual public space, a duty of care is the simplest way to keep people safe.

It comes after Digital Secretary Matt Hancock warned Facebook was “not above the law” following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly insisted the network is a neutral platform and not a publisher. Two leading experts are now arguing that rules similar to health and safety laws — many of which have been in effect since the Seventies — would balance protection of users and free speech. Professor Lorna Woods, an internet law expert at the University of Essex, and William Perrin, a former Cabinet Office civil servant, say this would reduce “harmful behaviours and risk” and create a “reasonably safe space for all”. The pair argue any service with a “strong social media element” should fall within such rules, particularly if there is a “strong youth user base”.

The proposed regulations would require firms to ensure their service was designed “to be safe to use”, while protecting youngsters from harmful and illegal content, hate speech and being sucked into games where they inadvertently pay to play.

Using health and safety rules would also give stronger rights to millions of users allowing them to sue social media providers for breaching their duty of care, the study added.

The research, published by the London School of Economics and Carnegie UK Trust, said: “When considering harm reduction, social media networks should be seen as a public place — like an office, bar or theme park. By taking a similar approach to corporate-owned public spaces, workplaces [and] products in the physical world, harm can be reduced in social networks.

“Duties of care set out in law 40 years ago or more still work well — fo r instance the duty of care from employers to employees in the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 still performs well, despite today’s workplaces being profoundly different from 1974.”

Former lawyer Professor Woods said: “Think about a public park or a pub or a library, and what sort of standards we expect in terms of safety and acceptable behaviour. In a children’s playground, is the climbing frame safe?

“It’s not about eradicating all risk, but are there any obvious problems with that climbing frame? Has it been designed to collapse for the entertainment of people standing around it who like seeing others fall off?”

Facebook declined to comment.