Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson), who made a very eloquent opening speech, and Members from across the Chamber, who have touched on really important matters.
As the hon. Member mentioned, the online space gives us great opportunities for connection and knowledge gathering, but also opportunities for greater harms. What has come across today is that we have addictive algorithms that are pushed in furtherance of commercial and malevolent interests—security interests, for example, although not the security of Great Britain—with no regard for the harm or impact they have on individuals or society.
When it comes to the Online Safety Act, we must get the balance right. Its protections for children and the vulnerable are vital. Of course, it is important to maintain freedom of speech and access to information. The Act is a step in the right direction in protecting children from extreme content, and we have seen changes in pornographic content. However, there are areas where it has not gone far enough, and it is not ready for the changes that are coming at a fast pace. There are websites that serve a public good that are age-gated, and forums for hobbies and communities that are being blocked. As the Liberal Democrats have said, we have to get the balance right. We also have to look at introducing something like a digital Bill of Rights with agile standards in the face of fast-paced changes, to embed safety by design at the base.
The harms that we need to protect children and vulnerable people from online are real. The contributions to this debate from hon. Members from across the House have been, as always, eye-opening and a reminder of how important this issue is. On pornographic content, we heard from the hon. Members for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) and for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) sickening reminders of the horrific content online that young people see—and not by choice. We must never forget that, as has also been said, people are often not seeking this content, but it comes through, whether on X, which was Twitter, or other platforms. The Molly Rose Foundation highlighted that
“children using TikTok and X were more than twice as likely to have encountered…high risk content compared to users of other platforms.”
The online world coming to life has been mentioned in this debate. One of my constituents in Harpenden wrote to me, horrified that her daughter had been strangled on a dancefloor, because it showed how violent, graphic content is becoming normalised. That struck me to my core. Other content that has been mentioned: suicidal content, violent content and eating disorder misinformation, which the hon. Member for Worcester (Tom Collins) talked so eloquently about. The Molly Rose Foundation also highlighted that one in 10 harmful videos on TikTok have been viewed more than 1 million times, so we have young people seeing that ex content.
Even beyond extreme content, we are starting to see the addictive nature of social media, and the insidious way that this short-form content is becoming such a normalised part of many of our lives. Recent polling by the Liberal Democrats revealed that 80% of parents reported negative behaviours in their child due to excess phone usage, including skipping meals, having difficulty sleeping, or reporting physical discomforts such as eye strain or headaches. Parents and teachers know the real harms that are coming through, but young people themselves do too. I carried out a safer screens tour in my constituency in which I spoke to young people. Many of them said that they are seeing extreme content that they do not want to see, and that, although they have blocked the content, it comes back. The Online Safety Act is helping to change that, but it has not gone far enough. The addictive element of social media is important. In our surveys, two quotes from young people stood out. One sixth-former said that social media is
“as addictive as a drug”,
and that they felt its negative effects every day. Another young person simply wrote, “Help, I can’t stop.” Young people are asking for help and protection; we need to hold social media giants and online spaces to account.
It is welcome that some of those harms have been tackled by the Online Safety Act. On pornography, Pornhub has seen a 77% reduction in visitors to its website; Ofcom has launched 76 investigations into pornography providers and issued one fine of £50,000 for failing to introduce age checks, but we need to ask whether that goes far enough. It has come across loud and clear in this debate that the Online Safety Act has not gone far enough. Analysis has shown that Instagram and TikTok have started to introduce new design features that comply with the Online Safety Act, but game the system to still put forward content that is in those companies’ commercial interests, and not in the interests of young people.
Other extremely important harms include the new harms from AI. Many more people are turning to AI for mental health support. Generative AI is creating graphic content, and the Internet Watch Foundation found that
“reports of AI-generated child sexual abuse material have more than doubled in the past year”
and the IWF says it is at the point where it cannot tell the difference any more—it is horrific.