Sadiq Khan announces plan to protect young people from harmful social media

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has announced he will invest £5 million in a city-wide effort to protect young people from online harms fuelled by social media algorithms.

The Mayor’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) has conducted new research which found that social media amplifies disputes between young people, making them public events that are more difficult to escape from, and fundamentally changing the scale of their interpersonal conflict.

Funding will go towards investment in digital youth work, a mentoring programme for girls and young women at risk of online violence and abuse, and interventions on masculinity for boys and young men through positive male role models.

Khan will also fund the first-ever London-wide bystander intervention programme, which he said will give young people the skills to recognise and challenge harmful online behaviours.

A new programme will also be created to earlier identify young people affected by online harms and rapidly respond to local incidents where these harms present a risk of violence. This scheme will operate across six London boroughs initially, with the goal of rolling out city-wide.

The research cited by the Mayor found an association between an increase in misogynistic posts online and a rise in police-recorded violence against women and girls that same day. It found that young people are not actively seeking out harmful content, but they are still being exposed to substantial amounts of violent and abusive content by algorithms.

It is important to note, however, that the data for this research was tracked across posts on X, as it is the only platform that provides location data. X is not the primary platform used by young people, and it is generally viewed as a less moderated and more controversial platform than Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram.

However, the researchers suggested that if the findings of this research were clear on X, they were likely to be compounded across the platforms more frequently used by young people.

Once clear finding from the report was that young people who are more dependent on the online world are at a greater risk of involvement in violence amplified by social media algorithms.

“I have consistently warned of the scourge of algorithms promoting hate, division and intentionally serving up both violent and misogynistic content to children and young people,” Khan said.

“Enough is enough. Online platforms must set out publicly how they will adjust algorithms or face the consequences.”

“Our new research shows that platforms promote violent content when young people haven’t searched for it, and reveals an association between misogyny online and violence against women and girls,” he said.

National social media ban for under-16s

Khan’s investment in protecting young Londoners from online harm follows on the heels of the government’s announcement that it plans to ban social media platforms from offering their services to under-16s.

This ban, which is similar to the model implemented in Australia, would require platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook, and X to prevent under-16s from using their services.

The government is also examining overnight social media curfews and forced breaks in infinite scrolling for under-18s, and the operators of AI romantic companion chatbots will be required to enforce a minimum age of 18 in the UK.

A common tool used to circumvent these sorts of bans is virtual private networks (VPNs), which can make it appear to platforms that the user is in a different country.

Ministers are aware of the possibility that VPNs could be used to circumvent this ban, and they are looking at putting age limits on the use of these tools, too.

Now read: Welsh village gets first mobile signal from a lamppost