New UK Bill to strengthen regulations protecting children online
5Rights urges the UK Government to back initiatives to strengthen the online safety and data protection regimes for children.
This Wednesday (16 October), Josh MacAlister, UK Member of Parliament for Whitehaven and Workington, will introduce new legislation to strengthen protections for children online.
5Rights welcomes the ambition of the Safer Phones Bill – particularly as it seeks to address deliberate design strategies used by tech companies that keep children online and infringe on their rights.
In particular, 5Rights strongly supports the Bill’s insertion of an overarching duty of care for children in the Online Safety Act, giving the digital regulator, Ofcom, a specific mandate to protect children’s interests and emphasising the need for a more robust enforcement of the regime. 5Rights and its Children’s Coalition for Online Safety have previously raised concerns about the approach to the Act taken by Ofcom.
Adjacent regulation, notably the Age Appropriate Design Code, must also be properly enforced to bring about the change children need and that parents so desperately call for. The Code, which sets out 15 standards digital services and products must follow when processing children’s data and is the first of its kind in the world, is now in its third year and has reverberated globally, leading to almost 100 design changes in the name of children’s privacy and safety.
The Safer Phones Bill will also propose raising the age at which companies can process children’s data without parental consent from 13 to 16 and putting existing guidance on phone-free schools on a statutory footing. These additional safeguards are important, but it remains up to the regulators to robustly and effectively challenge companies’ poor practices regarding children’s safety, security and privacy, ensuring the services children, parents, and teachers consent to are age-appropriate and the terms fair and transparent for the user, whatever their age.
The introduction of the Bill could not be timelier, with internal documents from TikTok this week revealing the company knew about its addictive design features and the impact it is having on young users, adding to an extensive and growing body of evidence of aggressive commercial exploitation of children by digital service providers.
Founder and Chair of 5Rights Foundation Baroness Beeban Kidron said:
“Josh MacAlister MP has brilliantly given new force to both the Age Appropriate Design Code and the Online Safety Act. I fully support him in wishing to strengthen both regimes.
I hope the Government fully understands the strength of feeling of parents, teachers and children across the UK, and they see that this bill reflects the wish of the public to see more robust enforcement of children’s privacy and safety by regulators.”
5Rights urges the Government to support all initiatives to strengthen the implementation of children’s rights online and take swift action to enforce existing regulations. We will continue to monitor the Bill as it progresses through the House of Commons.