Young people still regularly find porn on social media despite safety laws

The proportion of UK children being exposed to online pornography has not significantly changed since the implementation of the Online Safety Act, a report has found.

A review by Ofcom revealed that most children still admit to encountering harmful content, such as pornography, suicide and eating disorder content on at least a monthly basis.

Although robust age-verification measures are “helping to prevent” children from accessing dedicated porn websites, the media regulator reported little improvement in relation to other sources of pornographic content over the nine months since duties came into force.

Gaming services

“Children are still encountering pornographic content on social media, messaging and gaming services”, Ofcom explained, while children “most commonly” report seeing it on personalised feeds.

The regulator said that exposure to “pornographic content continues to negatively impact children’s wellbeing”, and has been linked to “normalising sexual coercion”.

Ofcom noted that “the majority of the most popular pornography services” have implemented age checks. However, of the eight per cent of 8 to 14-year-olds that accessed pornography websites at least once a month, only half did so on age-verified URLs. Overall, it found that almost two-thirds of all visits “lasted less than 10 seconds”.

‘New normal’

An Ofcom spokesperson stated: “This is an industry that’s been unregulated and unaccountable for more than 20 years.

“And so while significant progress is being made – including the introduction of widespread age checks, stronger protections against grooming, and tougher safeguards against child sexual exploitation and abuse – we’re under no illusion that there is much for the industry still to do.

“We’ve shown that tech firms that don’t comply with their duties can expect enforcement action.”

A Government spokesperson added: “Platforms have both a moral and legal duty to protect children and we expect them to work with us to set a new normal for future generations.”