My Lords, I support Amendments 20, 93 and 123, in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lords, Lord Bethell and Lord Stevenson. I also support Amendment 74 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I pay tribute to the courage of all noble Lords and their teams, and of the Minister and the Bill team, for their work on this part of the Bill. This work involves the courage to dare to look at some very difficult material that, sadly, shapes the everyday life of too many young people. This group of amendments is part of a package of measures to strengthen the protections for children in the Bill by introducing a new schedule of harms to children and plugging a chronological gap between Part 3 and Part 5 services, on when protection from pornography comes into effect.
Every so often in these debates, we have been reminded of the connection with real lives and people. Yesterday evening, I spent some time speaking on the telephone with Amanda and Stuart Stephens, the mum and dad of Olly Stephens, who lived in Reading, which is part of the diocese of Oxford. Noble Lords will remember that Olly was tragically murdered, aged 13, in a park near his home, by teenagers of a similar age. Social
media played a significant part in the investigation and in the lives of Olly and his friends—specifically, social media posts normalising knife crime and violence, with such a deeply tragic outcome.
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Last year in June, “Panorama” dared to look into this world. The programme revealed the depth and extent of the normalisation of knives and knife crime in posts offered to young people. I was struck by the comments of Frances Haugen, filmed when she met Stuart and Amanda. She said that each of us sees social media through a pinhole: a tiny snapshot of the total content. We have no idea how much darkness and evil are shaping children and young people, destroying their sense of proportion and deeply affecting offline behaviour. The only group that has the whole picture, of course, is the companies themselves.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others have outlined the remarkable degree of support for this raft of amendments from charities working to protect children. We should listen. These amendments will ensure a much wider definition of “harm” and will again future-proof the Bill in terms of technology which is even now coming over the horizon.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate speaks about an arms race to devise ever more effective ways of keeping users’ attention, even if it means putting them at risk. Its researchers set up new accounts in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia at the minimum age TikTok allows: 13 years old. Those accounts paused briefly on videos about body image and mental health and liked them. What the researchers found was deeply disturbing. Within 2.6 minutes, TikTok recommended suicide content. Within 8 minutes, TikTok served content relating to eating disorders. Every 39 seconds, TikTok recommended videos about body image and mental health to teens. CCDH researchers found a community for eating disorder content on the platform amassing 13.2 billion views across 56 hashtags, often designed to evade moderation.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, this fourfold classification of harms to children is being adapted elsewhere in the world, including the European Union. The schedule in the amendment gives clear but non-exhaustive examples to guide service providers on the meaning of each of the four Cs. It is vital to have more comprehensive agreed definitions of harm in the Bill.
I will reflect for a moment on what each of the four Cs means. Content harms are the most familiar. At the moment, children who go online are likely to encounter age-inappropriate content, including violent, gory and graphic communication, hate speech, terrorism, online prostitution, drugs, eating disorders and self-harm. Research also shows that exposure to different types of harmful content is interrelated: so, if a child reports seeing one type of disturbing content, it is likely that they have seen others as well.
Secondly, contact harms encourage harmful actions in the non-virtual world. A 10 year-old girl was left with burns after spraying an aerosol deodorant with the nozzle right up against her skin to create a freezing sensation. Jane Platt’s daughter Sarah, aged 15, was
rushed to hospital in February 2020 after doing the “skull-breaker challenge”, which involves two people kicking the legs from under a third, making them fall over. These suggestions could never be offered in young people’s magazines or broadcast media.
Thirdly, there are conduct harms. In a global survey, 54% of young people—57% of girls and 48% of boys—reported having experienced online sexual harms before they were 18 years old, including within interaction with adults and being asked something sexually explicit or being sent sexually explicit content.
Finally, there are commercial harms. Over half of the games on Google Play now include loot boxes and more than 93% of games that feature loot boxes are marked suitable for children aged 12 years-plus.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others have argued, these harms are often cumulative and interrelated. The social media companies are the only ones not looking through a keyhole but monitoring social media in the round and able to assess what is happening, but evidence suggests that they will do not so until compelled by legislation. These amendments are a vital step forward in fulfilling the Bill’s purpose of providing additional protection from harm for children. I urge the Government to adopt them.