The Guardian view on online harms: Ofcom is failing at its job | Editorial

One thing is clear following last week’s report from the media regulator, Ofcom: the mammoth task of protecting children from online harms has barely begun. Campaigners said that they were dismayed but not surprised that the proportion of children viewing harmful content has stayed the same despite a raft of measures in the Online Safety Act designed to protect them. Research showed that high-priority material including pornography and self-harm, as well as a broader category covering bullying, abuse and the promotion of violence, continued to be encountered regularly in the nine months after new safety duties came into force.

The regulator found that personalised feeds were the main way that such content was presented, and noted that such feeds show different material to boys and girls. Suicide and self-harm content were more commonly seen by girls and children with special educational needs or disabilities. In a grim irony, Ofcom’s report appeared one day after a coroner in Norfolk ruled that suicide imagery viewed on TikTok “may have played a significant part” in the decision by a 14-year-old girl to take her own life in May.

This is a deeply concerning situation. Significant resources went into the UK’s online safety bill on the understanding that, after two decades during which tech companies had been granted extraordinary freedom over the terms of their engagement with citizens, democratic control was being reasserted. Silicon Valley’s reckless disregard of children’s safety and wellbeing convinced the public, and then parliament, that action was needed. Yet three years after the bill passed, Meta, TikTok and X are all engaged in legal challenges against Ofcom and appear to believe that their interests should trump the law.

Andy Burnham’s government needs a step change in how it treats big tech, which currently differs little from its predecessor. Lisa Nandy held on to her job as secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport; a ban on social media accounts for under-16s is due to come into force in spring 2027. Ministers want the UK to take a tougher approach than Australia, a pioneer in preventing online harm, and are looking at proposals requiring photo ID for teens to access sites.

But the new age limit and other safety rules can only work if the regulator is capable of enforcing them. And the Ofcom report was not encouraging. In evidence to MPs about the lack of a “safety culture” at social media companies, Ofcom’s chief executive, Melanie Dawes, sounded far too tentative. Whistleblowers have been making similar points more forcefully for years.

The Online Safety Act was never meant to be a once-and-for-all law. The pace of technological change – above all, the rise of AI – made further legislation inevitable. But searching questions must be asked about a situation in which a new law has led to no benefits at all for the user group – children – that it was designed to protect. As the Guardian has argued previously, ministers should have imposed a duty of care and made businesses accountable for improvements, rather than simply obliging them to follow a code.

Accountability remains too easily evaded at the top of tech. Executives should face a greater risk of criminal penalties for serious failings. Expressions of disappointment are no substitute for action. Regulators and ministers have the powers to secure change. They need to demonstrate an appetite for using them.