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United Kingdom

5Rights leads innovation in digital policy, ensuring children and young people in the UK feel safe and empowered online. 

Overview

The UK, where 5Rights was founded, has pioneered digital regulation for children. It introduced the world’s first enforceable Age Appropriate Design Code in 2020, followed by the Online Safety Act in 2023, making it a key testing ground for policy innovation and implementation. 

Children’s experiences

Almost all 3-17-year-olds go online in the UK, mostly to watch videos, play video games, send messages to their friends and stay connected via social media. Nearly half of 11-year-olds who go online have a social media profile, despite a minimum age requirement of 13 for most social media sites. While watching videos, children are exposed to many advertisements and encouraged to spend cash as they are playing online games. Grooming cases and self-generated child sexual imagery are also on the rise, especially for younger children. 5Rights works hard to advocate that digital spaces likely to be accessed by children provide them with content and experiences appropriate to their age and evolving capacities. 

Our work in the UK

5Rights works closely with policy makers and regulators and leads the work of the Children’s Coalition for Online Safety. We also partner with Bereaved Families for Online Safety to keep children’s online safety at the forefront of the political agenda. In partnership with the London School of Economics, 5Rights launched the Digital Futures for Children centre, dedicated to researching a rights-respecting digital world for children.

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A young black girl on a laptop. She is smiling and waves at the laptop in front of her, which suggests she is on a video call.

In a major win for 5Rights, the UK Government has introduced a legal requirement for online services to consider children’s rights and needs when processing their data, by design and default. This move emboldens the Age Appropriate Design Code, strengthening protections to children’s data.

5Rights welcomes landmark UK legislation to protect children from online predators  

5Rights welcomes landmark UK legislation to protect children from online predators  

The UK becomes the world’s first country to criminalise tools used to create AI-generated child sexual abuse material as part of four new measures to take on online predators.

UK’s AI Opportunities Action Plan overlooks risks and potential for children

UK’s AI Opportunities Action Plan overlooks risks and potential for children

The UK Government has set a key marker of its plans for full-scale adoption of AI into the economy, making clear its intention to see its use scaled in education. Children must be a part of the conversation on the adoption of AI into services they have no choice but to use, with consideration of the opportunities and risks it poses.

Close-up of a young person on a smartphone that displays the Instagram logo, a simplistic outline of a camera, with the words "from Meta" underneath. The background is blurred.

Meta continues to ignore the prevalence of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) hosted and promoted on Instagram. So, we have urged Ofcom and the ICO to take action.