Just One Click – How digital design puts children at risk and how we can fix it ​

*CONTENT WARNING: Report and case studies describe and show harmful content, including content relating to eating disorders, self harm and sexualized and pornographic images​.

In 2021 5Rights published Pathways – a study looking at how the design choices of
digital products and services impact the lives of children. Using avatars – online profiles based on real children – this study found that design features enable automated pathways which can lead children to graphic images of self-harm, extreme diets, pornography, extremist content and introductions to adult strangers.

One year on, we worked with expert behavioural researchers at Revealing Reality to
repeat parts of the experiment to see if anything has changed for children online.

Download the key findings or watch the case studies below.

Case study​: One search and one click to eating disorder content  

​Case study: ​From trampolining to weight loss content in just two clicks

Case study: ​From one search of ‘slime’ to porn​

Case study: ​Private messaging from strangers​

Case study: Searching for ‘minecraft’ recommended pornography

Case study: Autocomplete functions on search bars leading to eating disorders

Case study: Searching pop stars leads to sexual violence