Government urged to reintroduce its Online Safety Bill

Dame Rachel de Souza has warned that children are still being bombarded with content promoting self-harm on social media sites which could lead to a repeat of the Molly Russell tragedy. The children’s commissioner is to publish research today which shows 45% of children aged eight to 17 are seeing unsolicited “upsetting and worrying” content often driven to them by social media algorithms. Dame Rachel said: “The content included anonymous trolling, diet restriction – that’s boys as well as girls – pornography, self-harm, sexualised images and violent and gory content. This shouldn’t be available to children and the tech companies should be making sure it’s taken down.” Dame Rachel has urged the Government to reintroduce its Online Safety Bill as soon as possible.
The Daily Telegraph