Keeping Children Safe Online

The UK is having one of the most important conversations about childhood in a generation.

The Government’s “Growing up in the online world” consultation has now closed, with a response expected over the summer. Ofcom has published its most comprehensive research yet into how children experience the internet. The Commons Education Committee has called for a statutory social media ban for under-16s. And for once, the question of what the online world is doing to children is being taken seriously at the highest level.

It is a debate worth getting right. So here is our view on where things stand, what the evidence is telling us, and what keeping children safe online will genuinely take for the next generation.

The Evidence Is Hard to Ignore

For years, concern about children online was easy to dismiss as moral panic. That is no longer a credible position.

Ofcom’s recent research found that nearly three quarters of 11 to 17 year olds had encountered harmful content online. Most of that exposure was not the result of children seeking it out. Around a third said they came across harmful material simply while scrolling their feeds, against only a tiny fraction who had gone looking for it.

That distinction matters more than almost anything else in this debate. It tells us the problem is not mainly about curious children searching for things they should not see. It is about systems designed to maximise engagement, serving harmful content to children who never asked for it.

When exposure to material about suicide, self-harm and bullying has stayed level or risen despite new legal duties, it is reasonable to conclude that the current approach has not yet gone far enough.

Design Is the Real Battleground

It is tempting to frame online safety as a question of content. Some content is harmful, the thinking goes, so we remove it and children are safe.

But the evidence points somewhere more uncomfortable. The harm is not only in individual pieces of content. It is in the design of the systems that decide what children see.

Recommendation feeds that learn what holds attention and serve more of it
Infinite scroll and auto play that remove every natural stopping point
Disappearing messages that make harmful contact harder to detect
Engagement metrics that reward the content most likely to provoke a reaction

These are choices, not accidents. They can be designed differently. The fact that some major platforms have agreed to strengthen protections under regulatory pressure, while others have insisted their feeds are already safe enough, shows that change is possible when there is the will to make it.

Safety by design is the right principle. The question now is whether it will be applied with enough ambition to actually shift the numbers.

Don’t Shift the Burden onto Schools and Families

As the debate has intensified, school leaders have raised a concern that deserves to be heard clearly. The Association of School and College Leaders, responding to the consultation as it closed, warned that the emphasis of the discussion risks placing responsibility on schools and families for regulating what it called the attention economy, rather than on the technology firms that build it.

It is a fair warning. There is a real risk that, in the rush to be seen to act, the practical work of managing online harm is quietly handed to the people with the least power to fix it. Teachers already see the consequences of unsafe design at first hand, from the rise of deepfakes to sextortion, and they describe these as growing, everyday problems. Asking them to also carry the policing burden, without holding the platforms to account, treats the symptom and ignores the cause.

School leaders have been measured about this. They acknowledge that age-based limits may now be necessary in the absence of effective regulation. But they caution against the misapprehension that banning social media for under-16s, or banning phones in schools, will on its own solve the problem. Both can be part of a response. Neither is a substitute for making the products themselves safer.

We agree. The most direct lever in this entire debate is the design of the platforms, and the firms that profit from them. Everything else is a way of coping with harm that better design would have prevented in the first place.

Legislation Is Necessary, But It Is Not Enough

Strong regulation has a vital role to play. The Online Safety Act gives Ofcom real powers, and the willingness to use them against platforms that fall short is welcome. Age assurance, design standards and genuine accountability for the largest services are all part of a serious response.

But we should be honest about the limits of legislation. A law can require a platform to assess risk and remove illegal material. It cannot sit beside a child at the moment they encounter something distressing. It cannot replace a parent noticing that something is wrong, or a teacher who has built enough trust that a young person feels able to speak up.

Ofcom itself reached a conclusion that deserves far more attention than it received. The single most important protective factor in a child’s online life is a trusted adult. Someone who asks good questions, stays in the conversation, and is there when a child needs them.

No regulator, and no piece of software, can manufacture that relationship. It is built at home, in classrooms, and in communities. Which means the most powerful protection available to any of us costs nothing and requires no legislation at all: paying attention, and staying close.

A Shared Responsibility

If there is one idea we would want to see at the centre of this national conversation, it is that online safety is not the responsibility of any single group.

Platforms must design products that are safe for children by default, not safe only after a regulator forces their hand. The technology to do better already exists. What has been missing is the incentive to use it.

Government and regulators must set clear, enforceable standards and be willing to act when they are not met. Proportionate, evidence-based rules give responsible platforms a level field and give parents confidence that someone is holding the line.

Schools are often where harm is first noticed and where digital literacy is taught. They should be supported to have open, age-appropriate conversations about online life, and properly funded to put protective policies in place. What they should not be is the default enforcement arm for problems created elsewhere. Holding the platforms to account is what allows schools to focus on teaching and pastoral care rather than policing.

Parents and carers hold the relationship that matters most. Not as surveillance officers, but as trusted adults who talk with their children about what they see online, without judgement, so that a child feels able to come to them when something goes wrong.

None of these groups can solve this alone. The temptation is always to point at one of them and ask why they have not fixed it. The reality is that children are kept safe by all of them working together.

Where We Stand

We believe children have a right to grow up in a digital world that is built with their wellbeing in mind, not one that treats their attention as a resource to be extracted.

We believe the current moment, with its consultation, its research and its public debate, is a genuine opportunity to reset the relationship between children and technology. It should not be wasted on half measures.

And we believe that while we wait for the rules to catch up, the most important thing any of us can do is also the oldest. Stay close to the children in our lives. Keep the conversation open. Make sure they always know there is a trusted adult they can turn to.

Technology created many of these problems. Thoughtful technology, clear rules, and engaged adults can help solve them. But it starts with deciding, as a society, that children’s safety online is worth taking seriously. We think it is. And we are glad the country is finally starting to agree.

Keeping Children Safe Online: Questions Parents Ask

Who is responsible for keeping children safe online?

Not any single group. Platforms need to design products that are safe for children by default, government and regulators need to set and enforce clear standards, schools need support to teach digital literacy without becoming an enforcement arm, and parents hold the trusted-adult relationship that matters most. Children are kept safe by all of them working together.

What does the research say about children and online harm?

Ofcom found that nearly three quarters of 11 to 17 year olds had encountered harmful content online, and most came across it while scrolling rather than searching for it. That points to engagement-driven design, not curious children, as the core of the problem.

What is the most important protective factor for a child online?

Ofcom’s own conclusion is that the single biggest protective factor is a trusted adult: someone who asks good questions, stays in the conversation, and is there when a child needs them. No regulator or piece of software can manufacture that relationship.

Where My Home Call Fits

The clearest finding in all of this research is also the most human: the single biggest protective factor in a child’s online life is a trusted adult they can reach. My Home Call does not filter content or change how platforms are built. What it does is make sure a child can always reach that trusted adult, even when their own phone is lost, flat, forgotten or left at home. On any borrowed device, a child identifies themselves with a quick facial scan and sends a message straight to a saved contact, with no personal numbers shown. You can see the full process on our how it works page.

Being reachable is not the whole of online safety. But it is part of staying close, which the evidence keeps pointing to as the thing that matters most. If you are weighing up these questions at home, our pieces on the first phone decision and AI chatbots and children look at two related corners of the same picture.

About My Home Call

My Home Call is a UK-built biometric safety platform. Any registered account holder, on a free or paid plan, can reach their saved contacts from any borrowed device, without needing their own phone, without remembering numbers, and without exposing personal contact details. Messages are sent as a text directly to the contact’s mobile, so there is no app for the person receiving the message to download.

It works wherever another device is within reach, giving children and families a secure way to reach home when their own phone is lost, flat, forgotten, or simply not allowed.