Keeping Children Safe Online

My son will attest that I don’t have much of a grasp of technology, and I know many parents feel the same. Most of us don’t have a full awareness of what our children are doing online or the reality of the content they’re seeing.

Change is needed to keep young people safe online, which is why the government’s consultation launched in January is so important.

We are taking action to make the online world safer by:

• Considering and debating the introduction of a minimum social media age limit.

• Restricting harmful design features.

• Preventing children from sending or receiving nude images.

• Tightening online safety laws so AI chatbot providers must operate with proper controls.

• Ending high-risk features such as stranger pairing and live streaming.

• Work is also underway on automatic data preservation so that, in tragic circumstances, coroners have access to crucial evidence.

• Running the ‘You Won’t Know Until You Ask’ campaign to give parents practical tools to start important conversations about body image, misinform

  ation, and harmful content.

• Stopping X’s AI bot, Grok, from creating non-consensual sexualised images.

Protecting children must come first, and platforms must be held accountable. But our decisions need to be thoughtful, evidence based and grounded in the realities of children’s lives. Overly strict bans risk pushing young people to new and less regulated platforms or leaving them unprepared at 17. And lots of children, including those in rural areas, disabled children, or LGBTQ+ young people, use social media for connection, community and support.