Source · Select Committees · Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 16
16
Paragraph: 116
We welcome Ofcom’s role in regulating online harms and Parliament’s role in identifying harms.
Recommendation
We welcome Ofcom’s role in regulating online harms and Parliament’s role in identifying harms. We recommend that the Government work closely with the UKRI and Ofcom to ensure that online harms legislation sufficiently encompasses protections from harms caused by body image pressures. We also ask that the Government engages with social media companies on developing innovative solutions to protect users from body image harms encountered online, and that Ofcom works with groups at high risk of developing poor body image to ensure the new regulatory system works for them. We ask that the Government takes this recommendation into account in advance of the Online Harms Bill passing into law.
Paragraph Reference:
116
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
The legislation will define the harmful content and activity covered by the regime. This includes illegal content and activity, legal but harmful content and activity for children, and legal but harmful content and activity for adults. The government will set out in secondary legislation the priority categories of criminal offences, legal but harmful content to children, and legal but harmful content for adults, that companies must take action on. We will be working with stakeholders and parliamentarians on identifying priority harms, and they will be subject to the usual secondary legislation processes. The regulator will have a duty to advise on categories of harm to children and categories of content and activity which is legal but harmful to adults, and will want to draw on evidence and stakeholder views. Ofcom will have a statutory duty to establish mechanisms for user advocacy. This will ensure Ofcom understands the experiences of users and is able to detect and address issues early on. We would also expect these mechanisms to pay regard to the experiences of people with intersecting characteristics online. In response to your comments regarding Ofcom working with groups at high risk of developing poor body image, the Government would like to highlight their ‘Making Sense of Media’32 programme of work. This programme looks to improve the online skills, knowledge and understanding of UK adults and children. Ofcom works closely with their advisory panel, which is made up of relevant stakeholders, to understand their ongoing workstreams. Current members of their advisory panel, which sits alongside the wider programme of work, includes (but is not limited to) representation from Google, UNESCO, Facebook and the BBC. The aims of this programme, which looks to improve the online media literacy of UK adults and children, includes facilitating media literacy discussion, collaboration and activity across the UK, including particular support for media literacy activities in underrepresented communities and vulnerable groups. The Government is engaging with Ofcom on this work and we will build momentum here when the Online Advertising Programme consults later this year to ensure that regulatory system considerations take into account the views and needs of those at high risk of developing poor body image.