Online harms: how young people experience the dark side of social media – and what research suggests governments should do to protect them
There is a growing policy debate on online harms taking place around the world, with some countries having banned children from accessing social media and others considering doing so. Informed by research, Imogen Parker of the Ada Lovelace Institute argues that governments must set a bolder agenda for the regulation of online spaces – and not just for young people, but for us all
Last week, the UK government shared some early findings from their landmark consultation on social media and young people, which closed last month.
The findings were striking: 89% of parents and carers of young adults and children aged 21 and under who responded supported “a legal requirement for social media services to have a minimum age of access”. And of these, 96% agreed to some extent that social media should have a minimum age of at least 16 and not be accessible to any children under that age. It’s rare that any policy measure gets such popular support.
But on the other side of the debate, there have also been several expert bodies working on child safety online arguing against or questioning the merits of a ban, based on concerns about feasibility challenges, potential harms to young people, privacy concerns and a misguided focus on prohibition over safety-by-design. Many worry that a ban might distract policy attention away from regulating the problematic design features and business models causing so much of the harm.
We’re now a week away from an expected announcement on whether the UK will follow other countries like Australia and introduce a social media ban for young people. And if it does, what will the policy look like, what exactly will be banned and how will it be implemented?
Exploring young people’s experiences of growing up in a digital world
At the Ada Lovelace Institute, we’ve been working with the Nuffield Foundation over the last two years to explore young people’s experiences of growing up in a digital world. With a cohort of 14-24 year olds, these are children and young adults who grew up with digital technologies as a significant part of their lives.
We wanted to design the research in a way that empowered young people to shape the topics and conversation in ways that reflected their interests and language. Working with partners, we trained up a group of 10 peer researchers who undertook research with other young people and work with us as research collaborators.
Partnering with a social work organisation enabled the project to engage young people who might face barriers participating in more standard quantitative and qualitative research, and whose experiences and preferences may be under-represented in traditional research.
This felt essential given not just the policy debates about social media, but the concerns about technology and youth more broadly, from smartphones in schools, to denudifcation and gendered harms, to the manosphere, addiction, and mental health concerns.
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The research findings: digital connection, harmful content, and algorithmic control
Here’s what we learned of relevance to the current wave of policy debate on social media taking place in a growing number of countries around the world:
There are meaningful benefits to their online communities that shouldn’t be overlooked: Digital connection is important for young people. While the digital environment can replicate or amplify structural inequalities, for some marginalised young people it can offer comfort and support not readily available in their immediate ‘offline’ environment. Young people do experience positive benefits from digital interactions, including accessing advice, relaxation and entertainment, as well as building community and relationships with their peers.
But these don’t justify widespread harm: At the same time, young people’s accounts starkly highlighted how they had experienced – and continue to experience – serious harms online. Their reflections reinforce broader evidence about the extent to which young people are exposed to prolific and inescapable harmful content including sexual material, graphic violence and technology-mediated sexual assault. Participants shared experiences of receiving sexually explicit images at young ages, having explicit photos of themselves shared among peers and being exposed to videos of abuse, and these experiences were typically gendered.
Harm doesn’t only arise from illegal or malicious content: These experiences felt harmful or uncomfortable – not solely because of ‘bad actors’, illegal content or ill intent, but also because of age-inappropriate interactions, such as adults asking for mental health support from children.
Platform design choices lead to young people feeling unable to control their online experiences or set boundaries: Young people understand their digital use and experiences as shaped by platform design choices, such as algorithmic nudges, gamification and ‘dark patterns’ that promote content for commercial or ideological motivations. They see current platforms as a form of manipulation that prioritises profit over wellbeing. But the reality is that the critical literacy young people possess is not sufficient for addressing the harms, which is why they were unequivocal in their call for meaningful changes to the platforms themselves.
Young people view social media and AI as contributing to mental health harms, but did not always identify harm at younger ages: They experience a desensitisation to harmful content and feel a generalised anxiety about constant digital surveillance. Children do not always recognise when they are being harmed: exposure to explicit content occurs early in young people’s online life and participants reflected that they did not always have sufficient maturity to identify these as harms. While their younger selves accepted seeing distressing content as part of everyday life, they grew to recognise the negative effects of these experiences, as well as the potential legal and societal implications.
Overall, they have strong and shared views that future young people should not be able to access social media or technology in the way they did: The benefits some young people find in online communities and support networks are countered by widespread exposure to serious online harms. Profound change is needed to enable people to take control of their relationship with technologies, tackle harms, address corporate power and ensure a better future for young people.
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Implications for policy
Drawing on our peer research, we identified some clear implications for policymakers to help them navigate their decision-making.
- Ambitious action is required. This research amplifies the case for robust policy action – that the status quo cannot be left to endure. The low level of optimism the participants had for change was a particularly bleak finding. Some participants felt resigned to their exposure to harmful content and described it as simply part of growing up.
- Policymaking needs to keep pace with technology and young people. Policies need to cover the online spaces where young people are spending time and the ways in which young people are using technology. We recommend the creation of a Young People’s Digital Futures Board to empower young people to scrutinise and inform policymaking.
- Regulating digital platforms shouldn’t stop at young people. While young people need age-specific protections, online harms do not stop at 16, 18 or 21. The digital environment should be cleaned up for all users as dark patterns, misinformation, polarisation and low agency matter to us all.
- Focusing on content and literacy is not enough. It’s time to regulate models and developers upstream and ensure products are safe before use, rather than leaving downstream users (and their parents) attempting to manage or monitor harms. Better education and literacy can play an important role, but it is not a substitute for robust regulation.
Governments around the world must persuade people that they have a clear vision for technology’s role in society, and the power to deliver on that vision: one which goes beyond the narrow aspiration of harm reduction, to shaping a digital environment that puts people and society at its heart. It’s time for a bolder agenda to regulate online spaces – not just for young people, but for us all.
About Imogen Parker
Imogen is Associate Director (Society, justice & public services) at the Ada Lovelace Institute. Imogen’s career has been at the intersection of social justice, technology and research. In her previous role as Head of the Nuffield Foundation’s programmes on Justice, Rights and Digital Society she worked in collaboration with the founding partner organisations to create the Institute. Prior to that she was acting Head of Policy Research for Citizens and Democracy at Citizens Advice, Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and worked with Baroness Kidron to create the children’s digital rights charity 5Rights. She is a Policy Fellow at Cambridge University’s Centre for Science and Policy.
