Landmark online safety measures have failed to limit the proportion of children suffering harm from social media, the UK’s online regulator has admitted, in an assessment branded “staggering” by campaigners. The proportion of children being fed unsafe content that often left them frightened, confused and upset, was almost unchanged, according to an Ofcom review of the first nine months of supposedly strict requirements on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. Under the Online Safety Act, the tech giants had to protect children from harmful content including pornography, serious violence, suicide material, racism, misogyny and bullying, with a series of specific duties introduced in summer 2025.
But Ofcom found that “at a total level there was no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content over the first nine months after the children’s safety duties came into force in July 2025”. It called the finding “concerning” and said there was no evidence indicating a change in the severity of harm since the flagship regulations, under the Online Safety Act, took effect. Examples of harms included children being shown the murder of Charlie Kirk, graphic pornography and weapon-related content making them feel unsafe in their schools and neighbourhoods.
Personalised recommendation feeds powered by “for you” algorithms were repeatedly found by Ofcom to be at the root of the continuing tide of harmful material. The findings come a week after a coroner concluded that access to the suicide-related material on TikTok may have played a significant part in the decision of Adriana Retyte, a 14-year-old pupil at Langley school in Norfolk, to take her own life in May. They come a day after Clavicular, 20, a popular social media influencer who promotes surgery and drugs as part of extreme male beauty regimes and has appeared with Andrew Tate, pleaded not guilty to rape in a US court, raising fresh concerns about the influence of “manosphere” content creators.
Ofcom’s research included tracking the exposure of UK children aged eight to 17 to harmful content on user-to-user services, its impact and their use of safety tools and an analysis of children’s wellbeing after exposure to harmful content. The assessment has been shared with Lisa Nandy, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport. NSPCC, a child protection charity, said the findings showed that children were being exposed to harmful content at an “alarming rate”, which it said was echoed in the flow of calls for help to Childline, its online and telephone support service.
Rani Govender, the head of child safety online, said “progress is not happening nearly fast enough”. It has warned it risks being “absolutely clobbered legally by deep-pocketed individuals and firms”. Children most commonly reported encountering pornographic content via personalised feeds, and girls, in particular, reported feeling confused or upset after seeing such content, Ofcom found.
Suicide and eating disorder content was also driven mostly through personal feeds, with girls most likely to encounter both types of harmful material. The Ofcom review also found that “young men and boys consuming motivational and self-improvement content can rapidly become exposed to more extreme content which includes the promotion of misogyny and racism”. Misspelled hashtags and coded language are often used to bypass content moderation systems that would otherwise block harmful misogynistic content.
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