UK’s regulator Ofcom launches the country’s first Children’s Online Safety Code
5Rights recognises this first Code as an important development setting a baseline for online safety but Ofcom must look beyond harmful content and think more holistically about creating safe digital environments for children.
The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, has published the first Protection of Children Code of Practice under the Online Safety Act. This marks an important moment for children’s online safety in the UK.
Head of UK Affairs, Colette Collins-Walsh, said:
“This Code marks an important step forward in the fight for the recognition of children online. While the Online Safety Act’s Children’s Code has been years in the making, we appreciate Ofcom’s work in establishing a baseline for children’s safety which we hope to see robustly enforced.
“However, if we are to truly build the digital world young people deserve, we must look beyond harmful content. Tech companies must be held accountable for the design choices which exploit young people’s natural curiosity and vulnerabilities to keep them engaged at any cost. This is the absolute minimum we must expect, and we look to Ofcom to address this as the regime comes into force.”
If services comply fully with the code, UK children will be prevented from seeing pornography, and should see less additional harmful content, such as suicide, self-harm and eating disorder and violent content. On some services, children should also see some default account settings to prevent them from being contacted by strangers.
These changes are extremely welcome, but we remain concerned that they are limited considering the broad remit and powers the legislation gives Ofcom to create safer online spaces for children.
5Rights has long called for strong regulation that holds companies to account for creating safer and rights-respecting services and products. Too often, tech companies make deliberate design decisions that fail to recognise children as a group with specific rights and needs and actively exploits their vulnerabilities.
Last year we joined the Children’s Coalition for Online Safety to call on Ofcom to address loopholes in the regulation which would allow tech companies to continue to put children at risk while still being in compliance with the law.
The Online Safety Act’s codes of practice must be as ambitious as possible and must look beyond codifying existing industry practices by facilitating innovation in designing for children.
Looking ahead to building on this baseline, we urge Ofcom to adopt the Children’s Coalition recommendation’s to robustly protect children online and work with government to ensure the code is iterative, responsive and aligned with the ambition for future-proof and robust regulation.