The Online Safety Act has today (Thursday 26 October) received Royal Assent, placing legal duties on social media platforms.
Lynn Perry MBE, Chief Executive of Barnardo’s, said:
“The Online Safety Act is an important first step towards making the UK the safest place for a child to be online.
“Through our frontline work across the UK, we support children whose mental health and understanding of healthy relationships are damaged by what they see online. We welcome the new duty placed on pornography sites to verify that users are over 18 which will help to stop children from viewing this type of harmful content.
“There is much more work to be done here and we will continue to work with the Government on implementing this legislation, the forthcoming review into pornography and ensuring we keep ahead of emerging online threats, such as AI and virtual reality, to protect our children.”