Ofcom finds no significant fall in children seeing harmful content online

Ofcom’s first statutory review of online content harmful to children, published on 22 October, found no statistically significant change in the overall proportion of children encountering such material during the first nine months after the UK’s child-safety duties took effect in July 2025. Most children surveyed said they had seen at least one type of harmful content online in a four-week period.

The finding is based in part on an online survey in which 11- to 17-year-olds recalled what they had seen. The harmful-content questions were answered by 1,396 children in March–April 2025, before the duties began, and 865 in March–April 2026. In the later survey, 61% reported seeing bullying content and 49% reported seeing hate content in the preceding four weeks. Those figures measure recalled exposure, not the number of children harmed.

The Guardian characterised the findings as a failure of the online safety laws to protect children. Ofcom’s report reaches a narrower conclusion: it does not assess whether individual services complied with the law or whether measures in its safety codes were effective. It also says there is no new evidence of a change in the severity of harm. Ofcom told the Guardian it had recorded reductions in harmful content on some platforms, and that the survey did not cover the later period in which it said it increased pressure on several large services.

Ofcom has recommended adding content that stigmatises bodies and content that promotes depression, hopelessness or despair to the law’s list of priority material harmful to children. That would put them on the same statutory footing as other listed categories, rather than leaving duties concerning them dependent on whether a service identified the risk in its own assessment. The change would require a ministerial decision; it has not yet been made.