Ofcom has acknowledged that its flagship online safety regime has so far failed to reduce the proportion of children encountering harmful content on social media, a finding the UK’s communications regulator itself described as concerning and one that child protection campaigners called staggering.
The admission comes from an Ofcom review covering the first nine months of the children’s safety duties introduced under the Online Safety Act, which took effect in July 2025. The duties required major platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, to shield young users from pornography, serious violence, suicide material, racism, misogyny and bullying. Despite those legal obligations, the regulator found that at a total level there was no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content over that period, and no evidence of any shift in the severity of the harm they experienced.
The assessment has been shared with Lisa Nandy, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, placing the question of regulatory effectiveness squarely before the government department responsible for the legislation. Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, told MPs this week that the watchdog does not see a safety culture from these large social media companies. Her comments land at a delicate moment, since the regulator is already facing legal challenges to its powers from Meta, the operator of Instagram, as well as from TikTok and X, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX group. Ofcom has warned that it risks being absolutely clobbered legally by deep-pocketed individuals and firms.
The review tracked the exposure of UK children aged eight to 17 to harmful content on user-to-user services, the impact of that exposure and their use of safety tools, alongside an analysis of children’s wellbeing afterwards. Ofcom repeatedly identified personalised recommendation feeds powered by “for you” algorithms as the root of the continuing tide of harmful material. Children most commonly reported encountering pornographic content through such feeds, and girls in particular reported feeling confused or upset after seeing it. Suicide and eating disorder content was also driven mostly through personal feeds, with girls most likely to encounter both types of material. The regulator further found that young men and boys consuming motivational and self-improvement content can rapidly become exposed to more extreme material promoting misogyny and racism, with misspelled hashtags and coded language often used to bypass moderation systems.
Examples of the harms recorded included children being shown the murder of Charlie Kirk, graphic pornography and weapon-related content that left them feeling unsafe in their schools and neighbourhoods.
Meanwhile, the findings arrive against a backdrop of mounting accountability questions. A week earlier, a coroner concluded that access to 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. A day before the review’s publication, Clavicular, a 20-year-old 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, renewing concern about manosphere content creators.
Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly took her life aged 14 in 2017 after viewing suicide material on social media, told the Guardian the lack of progress was staggering but sadly not surprising. He blamed timidity and lack of action from the regulator, saying it is time Ofcom stood up for children and investigated the major flaws in TikTok and Instagram’s design features rather than focusing on small technicalities.
The NSPCC said children were being exposed to harmful content at an alarming rate, echoed in calls for help to Childline. Rani Govender, its head of child safety online, said progress is not happening nearly fast enough, adding that tech companies have had months to act yet too many platforms are still built to keep children hooked while algorithms push harmful content to young users.
By contrast, Ofcom defended its record, saying the industry had been unregulated and unaccountable for more than 20 years, and pointing to widespread age checks, stronger protections against grooming and tougher safeguards against child sexual exploitation and abuse. It noted the data did not cover the period from this spring when it stepped up pressure on Facebook, YouTube, Snap, Roblox and TikTok, and said it recorded some reductions in harmful content on platforms including Minecraft, Call of Duty, YouTube, Pinterest and Facebook. In July it launched an investigation into TikTok over child safety concerns, including how it verifies whether users are adults or children.
The risks come before a planned Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, due from next spring, covering platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and X but not messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal. Mitali Sud, a senior policy manager at Internet Matters, warned that a ban cannot replace the need to make online services safer, since children will continue to face risks on services covered by the act but not the proposed ban, including gaming and messaging platforms, and 16- and 17-year-olds will still use social media.
A government spokesperson said platforms needed to do more, citing bold action including the under-16 ban and protections from harmful functionalities such as livestreaming and stranger communications across a wide range of services. When it comes to children’s safety, the spokesperson said, we are not and never will be bystanders, and platforms have both a moral and legal duty to protect children. TikTok, Meta, X and Google were contacted for comment.