Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps Ofcom is taking to prevent children from accessing regulated platforms while under the minimum age limits in those companies’ terms of service.

Child online safety is of utmost importance to the government. Under the Online Safety Act, all user-to-user services likely to be accessed by children have a duty to include provisions in their terms of service specifying how children of any age are prevented from encountering the most harmful content and protected from encountering other types of harmful content.

Services that have age restrictions must specify in their terms of service what measures they are taking to prevent underage access, and they are required apply these terms consistently.