Social media curfews may very well be imposed on kids, says Technology Secretary | EUROtoday

Social media curfews for kids are amongst a variety of plans being thought of by the Government, the Technology Secretary has revealed.

Peter Kyle instructed the Daily Telegraph he was “watching very carefully” the introduction of TikTok’s 10pm curfew for customers underneath 16 and inspecting instruments for fogeys to modify off entry at set instances.

“These are things I am looking at,” he mentioned.

“I’m not going to act on something that will have a profound impact on every single child in the country without making sure that the evidence supports it.”

The proposal got here amid issues about how the “addictive” nature of social media was interrupting sleep schedules and disrupting education and household life.

Mr Kyle mentioned he was contemplating enforcement choices underneath the Online Safety Act following regulator Ofcom’s publication of the Children’s Code.

He described the brand new guidelines as a “sea change” underneath which folks can anticipate their baby’s social media expertise to “look and feel different”.

Mr Kyle mentioned he wouldn’t be “short of encouraging Ofcom to use its powers to the full” to tremendous social media firms and imprison offenders.

The Online Safety Act started coming into impact final month and requires platforms to observe new codes of observe set by the regulator Ofcom, as a way to maintain customers secure on-line.

It comes after the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which finds and helps take away abuse imagery on-line, mentioned 291,273 stories of kid sexual abuse imagery have been reported in 2024.

In its annual report, the organisation mentioned it was seeing rising numbers of instances being pushed by threats, together with AI-generated sexual abuse content material, sextortion and the malicious sharing of nude or sexual imagery.

It mentioned under-18s have been now going through a disaster of sexual exploitation and threat on-line.

In response, the IWF introduced it was making a brand new security instrument out there to smaller web sites totally free, to assist them spot and forestall the unfold of abuse materials on their platforms.

The instrument, often known as Image Intercept, can spot and block photos within the IWF’s database of greater than 2.8 million which have been digitally marked as felony imagery.

The IWF mentioned it’ll give vast swathes of the web new, 24-hour safety and assist smaller companies adjust to the Online Safety Act.

Derek Ray-Hill, interim chief govt on the IWF, mentioned: “Young people are facing rising threats online where they risk sexual exploitation, and where images and videos of that exploitation can spread like wildfire.

“New threats like AI and sexually coerced extortion are only making things more dangerous.

“Many well-intentioned and responsible platforms do not have the resources to protect their sites against people who deliberately upload child sexual abuse material.

“That is why we have taken the initiative to help these operators create safer online spaces by providing a free-of-charge hash checking service that will identify known criminal content.”