Key facts
- Young people desire age-specific online protections and significant policy changes to address digital harms.
- Peer research indicates widespread exposure to harmful content and a normalization of negative online behaviors among youth.
- Participants reported navigating online risks in isolation and taking responsibility for their own and younger individuals' safety.
- The government's consultation explored measures like minimum social media age, restricting addictive features, and age verification.
- Recommendations include strengthening and enforcing age-specific protections across various digital technologies.
- A proposal suggests creating a standing Young People's Board on Digital Futures for ongoing policy input.
Young people are advocating for significant policy changes and age-specific protections to address the harms they experience online, according to new peer research from the Ada Lovelace Institute. The research, part of the Nuffield Foundation’s Grown up? Journeys into adulthood programme, highlights that participants, who are part of the first generation to grow up with digital technology, have faced widespread exposure to harmful content, abuse, and normalized negative behaviors.
These young individuals reported navigating the online world in isolation, taking responsibility for their own safety and that of younger siblings. Many expressed a pessimistic outlook, viewing exposure to harmful content as an inevitable part of growing up. The peer research involved 49 young people across four diverse locations, including those often excluded from policymaking, such as individuals with experiences of poverty, homelessness, or social care.
The findings have direct implications for the government's ongoing consultation on children's digital wellbeing, which includes considering a minimum age for social media. The report suggests that blunt restrictions alone will not suffice and emphasizes the need for strengthened and enforced age-specific protections across a range of digital technologies, including social media, gaming platforms, chatbots, AI agents, immersive technologies, and EdTech. These measures should complement broader regulations addressing harms for all users.
The government's consultation, which closed on May 26, aimed to understand technology's impact on children's wellbeing and explore potential measures. These included setting a minimum age for social media access, restricting addictive design features like infinite scrolling, raising the digital age of consent, and improving age verification technologies. The government has committed to acting swiftly on the consultation's findings, with new legal powers announced in February 2026.