Over the past ten years, there has been a growing effort to moderate and regulate content present on online services such as commonly used social media platforms. Rather than leaving it up to individual companies and platforms to decide what stays and what goes, governments and international organisations have drafted and enforced regulations to reduce the amount of harmful content online and protect users. As a jurisdiction, the UK has joined other countries and conglomerates like Australia and the European Union in mandating that platforms reduce harmful online content introducing a suite of online safety regulations in 2019 [1], culminating in the Online Safety Bill set for Royal Assent in Autumn 2023 [2] set to change how platforms determine and reduce the content which poses a risk of harm online.

At the same time, there has been increasing awareness of how content seen and interacted with can harm young people and children. [3,4] Various studies have highlighted how specific types of harm can be caused to young people via their online interactions and consumption of content. [5, 6, 7, 8, 9] However, minimal work is concerned with the mundane, everyday interactions, the types of content young people are seeing and the harms they are experiencing should they pick up their phones or log onto devices as an increasing part of everyday life.

In light of new regulations being enacted with young people as a targeted user group, this project investigates the contemporary everyday interactions of young people with harmful and potentially harmful content to determine how effective new regulations being introduced in the UK will reduce the harm they come to. Based on the hypothesis that a better balance can be struck between the policy interests concerning regulation and the user interests concerning interactions online, this research centres on the regulatory developments in the United Kingdom and uses the following research question as a guide to inquiries:

To what extent will the digital duties of care as regulatory mechanisms online impact the cybersafety of young people aged 12-20 interacting with user-to-user services?

This project aims to capture their everyday experiences of online harm by engaging directly with young people as a user group. [10, 11, 12, 13] By comparing these experiences with the UK's regulations, the project aims to determine how effective the new digital duties and obligations platforms are in reducing harmful content and limiting children's negative experiences online. The anticipated impact of this project is to provide recommendations for additional regulatory guidance to the appointed online safety regulator Ofcom [14], addressing the gaps potentially present in the primary legislation [15, 16, 17, 18] and enhancing the understanding of the contemporary experiences of young people as they use platforms daily.  

References:

[1] The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, The Online Harms White Paper (2019)

[2] ‘Online Safety Bill: Crackdown on Harmful Social Media Content Agreed’ BBC News (19 September 2023) <https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66854618> accessed 21 September 2023

[3] OFCOM, ‘Online Nation Report 2022’ (OFCOM 2022) <https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/238361/online-nation-2022-report.pdf>

[4] OFCOM, ‘Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report 2022’ (2022) <https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/234609/childrens-media-use-and-attitudes-report-2022.pdf>

[5] Best P, Manktelow R and Taylor B, ‘Online Communication, Social Media and Adolescent Wellbeing: A Systematic Narrative Review’ (2014) 41 Children and Youth Services Review 27

[6] Slavtcheva-Petkova V, Nash VJ and Bulger M, ‘Evidence on the Extent of Harms Experienced by Children as a Result of Online Risks: Implications for Policy and Research’ (2015) 18 Information, Communication & Society 48

[7] Richards D, Caldwell PH and Go H, ‘Impact of Social Media on the Health of Children and Young People: Social Media and the Health of Young People’ (2015) 51 Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 1152

[8] Jacob N, Evans R and Scourfield J, ‘The Influence of Online Images on Self-Harm: A Qualitative Study of Young People Aged 16–24’ (2017) 60 Journal of Adolescence 140

[9] Tzani C and others, ‘A Description and Examination of Cyber‐bullying Victimisation in the UK’ (2021) 18 Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling 157

[10] Wyeth P and Diercke C, ‘Designing Cultural Probes for Children’, Proceedings of the 20th conference of the computer-human interaction special interest group (CHISIG) of Australia on Computer-human interaction: design: activities, artefacts and environments  - OZCHI ’06 (ACM Press 2006) <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1228175.1228252>

[11] Azmi NH and Raza FHA, ‘Doing Probes Diary with Children in Reporting Social Networking Behaviour’ (2015)

[12] Moser C, ‘Child-Centered Game Development (CCGD): Developing Games with Children at School’ (2013) 17 Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 1647

[13] Mattelmäki T, Design Probes ([2nd ed], University of Art and Design 2008)

[14] OFCOM, ‘Online Safety Bill: Ofcom’s Roadmap to Regulation’ (OFCOM 2022) <https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/information-for-industry/roadmap-to-regulation>

[15] Harbinja E, ‘The UK’s Online Safety Bill: Safe, Harmful, Unworkable?’ <https://intr2dok.vifa-recht.de/receive/mir_mods_00010635>

[16] Nash V and Felton L, ‘Treating the Symptoms or the Disease? Analysing the UK Online Safety Bill’s Approach to Digital Regulation’ [2023] SSRN Electronic Journal <https://www.ssrn.com/abstract=4467382>

[17] Nyamutata C, ‘Childhood in the Digital Age: A Socio-Cultural and Legal Analysis of the UK’s Proposed Virtual Legal Duty of Care’ (2019) 27 International Journal of Law and Information Technology 311

[18] Perrin W, Woods L and Walsh M, ‘The Online Safety Bill: Our Initial Analysis’ (Carnegie Trust UK 2022) <https://d1ssu070pg2v9i.cloudfront.net/pex/pex_carnegie2021/2022/03/31120201/The-Online-Safety-Bill-Our-Initial-Analysis.pdf>