My Lords, it is a pleasure to be collaborating with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. We seem to have been briefed by the same people, been to the same meetings and drawn the same conclusions. However, there are some things that are worth saying twice and, although I will try to avoid a carbon copy of what the noble Baroness said, I hope the central points will make themselves.
The internet simply must be made to work for its users above all else—that is the thrust of the two amendments that stand in our names. Through education and communication, the internet can be a powerful means of improving our lives, but it must always be a safe platform on which to enjoy a basic right. It cannot be said often enough that to protect users online is to protect them offline. To create a strict division between the virtual and the public realms is to risk ignoring how actions online can have life and death repercussions, and that is at the heart of what these amendments seek to bring to our attention.
I was first made aware of these amendments at a briefing from the Samaritans, where we got to know each other. There I heard the tragic accounts of those whose loved ones had taken their own lives due to exposure to harmful content online. I will not repeat their accounts—this is not the place to do that—but understanding only a modicum of their grief made it obvious to me that the principle of “safest option by default” must underline all our decision-making on this.
I applaud the work already done by Members of this House to ensure the safety of young people online. Yet it is vital, as the noble Baroness has said, that we do not create a drop-off point for future users—one in which turning 18 means sudden exposure to the most harmful content lurking online, as it is always there. Those most at risk of suicide due to exposure to harmful content are aged between their late teens and early 20s. In fact, a 2017 inquiry into the suicides of young people found harmful content accessed online
in 26% of the deaths of under 20s and 13% of the deaths of 20 to 24 year-olds. It is vital for us to empower users from their earliest years.
In the Select Committee—I see fellow members sitting here today—we have been looking at digital exclusion and the need for education at all levels for those using the internet. Looking for good habits established in the earliest years is the right way to start, but it goes on after that, because the world that young people go on to inhabit in adulthood is one where they are already in control of the internet—if they had the education earlier. Adulthood comes with the freedom to choose how one expresses oneself online—of course it does—but this must not be at the cost of their continuing freedom from the most insidious content that puts their mental health at risk. Much mention has been made of the triple shield and I need not go there again. Its origins and perhaps deficiencies have been mentioned already.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate recently conducted an experiment, creating new social media accounts that showed interest in body image and mental health. This study found that TikTok served suicide-related content to new accounts within 2.6 minutes, with eating disorder content being recommended within 8 minutes. At the very least, these disturbing statistics tell us that users should have the option to opt in to such content, and not have to suffer this harm before later opting out. While the option to filter out certain categories of content is essential, it must be toggled on by default if safety is to be our primary concern.
The principle of safest by default creates not only a less harmful environment, but one in which users are in a position to define their own online experience. The space in which we carry out our public life is increasingly located on a small number of social media platforms—those category 1 platforms already mentioned several times—which everyone, from children to pensioners, uses to communicate and share their experiences.
We must then ensure that the protections we benefit from offline continue online: namely, protection from the harm and hate that pose a threat to our physical and mental well-being. When a child steps into school or a parent into their place of work, they must be confident that those with the power to do so have created the safest possible environment for them to carry out their interactions. This basic confidence must be maintained when we log in to Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or any other social media giant.