Why children need the Online Safety Act: protecting children in a digital wild west
With online grooming crimes in the UK surging 89% and a quarter of children exposed to pornography by age 11, now is not the time to take a step back on online safety.
As the UK debates the future of the Online Safety Act, the stakes couldn’t be higher for millions of children navigating an increasingly dangerous digital landscape.
More than one in four children are exposed to pornography by age 11, online grooming crimes have surged by 89% since 2017, and on platforms like TikTok, a child can encounter harmful content every 39 seconds, including suicide-related material within just 2.6 minutes of creating an account. These numbers, 5Rights warns, are clear indicators of a system that has failed to keep children safe online.
The Online Safety Act represents the UK’s first comprehensive response to this growing crisis, delivering concrete protections that transform how children experience the digital world. But its true significance lies in what it represents: that children have unique needs and rights and that these apply online just as they offline – principles 5Rights has championed since our founding.
Real protections where they matter the most
The Act introduces fundamental safeguards across multiple areas:
- Predatory contact is being blocked: the Act mandates platforms to turn off location sharing by default for children, prevents adults from directly messaging minors, and stops the recommendation of children’s profiles to adult users.
- Harmful content is being filtered out before it reaches children’s feeds: platforms cannot serve up material promoting suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders to young users.
- Tech company stonewalling is ending for bereaved families seeking answers. The Act compels cooperation with coroners and mandates companies to set out clear processes for parents.
- Free speech and privacy remain protected: the Act explicitly mandates that any safety measures must preserve fundamental rights.
- Privacy-first age assurance: any age assurance technology must be privacy-preserving, proportionate to actual risks, and fully compliant with UK GDPR, with mandatory deletion of data once age is confirmed.
Built on evidence and advocacy
5Rights Foundation has been at the forefront of this debate since the beginning. The 5Rights-led Children’s Coalition for Online Safety, bringing together more than 20 expert organisations, established the gold standard for effective child protection in our Enforcing the Online Safety Act report, setting out a clear vision for effective implementation.
And while the Online Safety Act’s implementation should be more robust and its Codes of Practice more ambitious, this cannot mean throwing out years of advocacy from children, families, parliamentarians and civil society who refused to accept that online harm was inevitable.
“Overall, the law is a good start, but we have got to keep speaking up if we want a digital world that’s actually made for us… the law is finally making tech companies to take this issue seriously.
But of course, I think there’s still more to do. Things like endless scrolling, autoplay or constant notifications, these features always keep young people glued to screens, and the law still doesn’t cover them yet.”
Hayden, 5Rights Youth Ambassador
Because the human cost of that would extend far beyond statistics: it reaches into homes where parents struggle to protect their children from harms they may not even understand, while tech companies continue business as usual.
Moving forward, not backward
As 5Rights continues to monitor implementation and hold tech companies accountable, we recognise that the Online Safety Act must evolve to meet new challenges. But its existence is a starting point: a foundation on which safer digital spaces can be built.
The question facing the UK right now isn’t whether the Online Safety Act is perfect, but whether we’re prepared to leave children defenceless in an increasingly dangerous digital world.
For the bereaved families who campaigned for change, for the children currently at risk, and for future generations who deserve better, the answer must be a resounding commitment to protection over profit, safety over the status quo.