Sweeping new rules designed to deal with the “total Wild West” young people were experiencing online have now been in place across the UK for a month.
Ofcom’s Children’s Codes require pornography and other harmful content to be kept away from young people, either through age verification or algorithm changes.
More than half a million people have signed a petition calling for the Online Safety Act to be repealed, while ministers insist the legislation’s been a success.
So what difference have these controversial new regulations made?
‘I feel more clean’
In the days before they were enforced, Sky News spoke to a group of teenagers at a youth club in Warrington, and their experiences online were stark.
They told us about frequently stumbling across violence, pornography and harmful mental health content in their social media feeds.
One 17-year-old described seeing more harmful and inappropriate content online “than I can count”. Even a 12-year-old described being shown language that “can be quite explicit for children my age”.
So, one month later, we spoke to some of the teenagers again. The difference in what they reported was remarkable.
Ryan, 17, told us previously that the internet was a “very, very malicious” place and described frequently seeing inappropriate content.
Just one month on, he says his algorithm now seems “tamed” – although he’d still describe the internet as malicious.
“[My] algorithms have been quite tame in comparison to what they were. I haven’t seen any sort of advertisements and stuff that can be alluding towards anything inappropriate,” he said.
Liam, 16, also said Instagram felt “tamed” compared to what it was like before.
He was previously being served a lot of eating disorder content but “in the time that the rules have been in place I don’t actually think I’ve seen any”.
“I used to see them every few scrolls so it’s very much gone down.”
Young people gathered at the…
