Online safety rules don’t go far enough, say parents
A group of bereaved parents have warned that the Online Safety Act does not yet go far enough to protect children on social media.
Bereaved Families for Online Safety have sent a joint letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, urging both to pledge to do more for child online safety ahead of the approaching general election.
The intervention from the parents of 11 children, whose deaths involved social media in some form, comes after Ofcom published its draft children's safety codes of practice, which set out how it expects online services to meet their new legal responsibilities to protect children online under the Online Safety Act.
It will require social media platforms to take action to stop their algorithms recommending harmful content to children, and put robust age-checking measures in place to protect them.
In their letter, the parents say that while this is an "important moment" and they are "grateful" that regulation is "slowly but surely taking shape", they say "much more needs to be done" and they have "so far been disappointed" by the "lack of ambition" around the safety laws, and fear the rapid evolution of technology means that laws and regulation will "need to work hard to keep up".
"We collectively fear that Ofcom's proposed approach may be insufficient to tackle the growing risks of grooming, sexual abuse, content that promotes or facilitates acts of serious violence, and the active incitement of acts of suicide and self-harm among young people," the letter says.
Directly addressing the political leaders, it adds:
"In the next Parliament, you will have a decisive opportunity to act. There is a considerable groundswell in demands for more to be done. Across the country, there is a genuine and deeply held concern among parents, and you will be aware of the growing calls for a fundamental reset in the way that technology companies design their products.
"As a senior politician but also as a father, we strongly encourage you to heed those calls and ensure that children's online safety can no longer be considered as an afterthought.
"Put simply, we encourage you to make clear to tech companies they must start to design and build their services in a safe and fundamentally responsible way. If companies are not prepared to do so, they should be made to understand there is no longer be a place for them in the UK."
Appearing on BBC Breakfast and putting questions to Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan, the parents expressed their frustration at what they claimed was inaction from tech companies and the delay in the Online Safety Act being enforced as Ofcom carries out its consultation process and publishes draft codes of practice before seeking their approval from Parliament, a process expected to take another 12 months to complete.
The campaign group includes Ian Russell, the father of 14-year-old Molly Russell - who took her own life in November 2017 after viewing harmful material on social media.
He said tech firms were "buying as much time as they can" by claiming they were waiting for Ofcom to publish all its codes before making the changes to their platforms to provide adequate protection for children.
In response, Ms Donelan said: "I feel your frustration on this and if we could fully implement the Bill tomorrow I'd be doing it, but there is a bit of a trade off.
"These are companies that are multibillion-pound organisations, what we don't want to do is do it so fast that it has lots of loopholes or that they can easily litigate and it's chewed up in the courts for years. We want this to be robust, we want it to be bulletproof to make sure that it actually delivers."
She added: "We've always said that the Online Safety Act was the start of the journey, not the end destination and we need to continue to layer up and build on that.
"What we've done is really big, is groundbreaking, and it's more than any other country in the world has done in this space. Is it job done? Absolutely not because our children and their wellbeing matter more than anything and we should always be prioritising that and re-evaluating and going that bit further."