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U.S.-UK JOINT STATEMENT ON CHILD ONLINE SAFETY

 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, October 10, 2024
OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

publicaffairs@doc.gov(link sends email)

The following joint statement was released by the Government of the United
States of America and the Government of the United Kingdom on the sidelines of
the G7 Ministerial on Industry, Technology, and Digital, as part of the U.S.-UK
Comprehensive Dialogue on Technology & Data.

Begin text:

The United Kingdom and United States share fundamental values and a commitment
to democracy and human rights, including privacy and freedom of expression. Both
the United Kingdom and United States, alongside our international partners, are
taking steps to support children’s online safety.

To make the Internet safer for children, we should aim to ensure all users have
the skills and resources they need to make safe and informed choices online, and
advance stronger protections for children. The United States and United Kingdom
intend to work with our national institutions and organizations to support these
goals and shared values. To help further these aims, both countries plan to
establish a joint children’s online safety working group to advance the aims and
principles of this statement.

There are parallels between the child online safety landscape in the United
States and United Kingdom. Smartphone ownership is nearly universal amongst
teenagers in both countries.1,2,3  Children in the United States and the United
Kingdom actively engage with social media platforms daily; upwards of six in ten
13 to 17-year-olds in the United States and United Kingdom report using TikTok,
Snapchat, and Instagram,4 whilst nearly nine in ten report using YouTube.5,6 In
both countries, children report accessing social media at an early age. Nearly
40 percent of 8 to 12-year-olds in the United States7 and 63 percent of 8 to
11-year-olds in the United Kingdom report using social media.8

We recognize the significant educational and social benefits technology can
provide children and seek to ensure that they can flourish, online and offline.
To ensure these benefits can be maximized, online platforms, including social
media companies, have a moral responsibility to respect human rights and put in
place additional protections for children’s safety and privacy. Age-appropriate
safeguards, including protections from content and interactions that harm
children’s health and safety, are vital to achieve this goal. This includes
measures to address and prevent sexual exploitation and abuse, harassment,
cyberbullying, content that is abusive (including technology-facilitated
gender-based violence), and content that encourages or promotes suicide,
self-harm, and eating disorders.

The UK Government is committed to the online safety of children. The Online
Safety Act places clear duties on online platforms to protect children’s safety
and put in place measures to mitigate risks. For example, platforms must use
‘highly effective’ privacy preserving age assurance technologies to prevent
children from encountering the most harmful content, including pornography
(including violent pornography) and content which encourages or promotes
suicide. Platforms also need to proactively tackle the most harmful illegal
content and activity, including child sexual exploitation and abuse and content
which disproportionately affects women and girls, such as harassment, intimate
image abuse, and controlling or coercive behavior. Companies can elect to
voluntarily extend these protections to children living across the world to
increase the health, safety, and privacy of children.

The U.S. government has taken bold action to advance children’s online health,
safety, and privacy. In 2023, the United States Surgeon General issued a new
advisory about the effects social media use has on youth mental health. Building
on this advisory, the U.S. government launched the Kids Online Health and Safety
Task Force to advance the health, safety, and privacy of children online,
including preventing and mitigating the adverse health effects that children can
experience through the use of online platforms. The Task Force released a report
which includes guidance and recommendations for industry, parents and
caregivers, researchers, and policymakers on how to promote and enhance youth
online health, safety, and privacy.9 Further, the U.S. government has made
addressing image-based sexual abuse a core focus of its AI policy, with several
actions to promote the safeguarding of AI systems from generating child sexual
abuse material included in the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and
Trustworthy Development and Use of AI, and issuing a call to action inviting
industry to make voluntary commitments to reduce the generation, dissemination,
and monetization of image-based sexual abuse. 

We should continue to advocate for increased transparency from online platforms,
including clear and accessible terms of service and reporting on online safety
practices, to assist governments, regulators, independent researchers, and the
public to develop a better understanding of the technologies that are shaping
children’s lives. Further independent, public interest research is needed to
evaluate the impact of excessive social media and smartphone use on children’s
development and enable researchers and policymakers to work towards a robust
framework to assess the risks to children at different stages of their childhood
and adolescence. To support such research, we should consider work to increase
privacy-preserving access to online platform data for independent researchers.
These risks and challenges associated with the digital environment are
constantly evolving alongside new and emerging technologies, including
generative AI. We should seek to ensure that research on the impacts of these
new technologies keeps pace with their development.

Both countries acknowledge that risk-based and safety-, privacy-, and
inclusivity-by-design approaches throughout design, development, and deployment
are fundamental to children’s safety and wellbeing online, alongside increased
transparency and accountability from online platforms. We consider that
measures, as appropriate, such as preventing the promotion of harmful content,
better reporting on content moderation, strong default privacy settings, and
limits on targeted advertising, play an important role in protecting children
from excessive data collection and harmful content and interactions, while
delivering age-appropriate experiences. We also believe it is imperative that
such measures are implemented in a manner that respects human rights, including
privacy and freedom of expression. The United Kingdom and United States continue
to work together to protect children online through multilateral forums such as
the OECD.

We encourage online platforms to go further and faster in their efforts to
protect children by taking immediate action and continually using the resources
available to them to develop innovative solutions, while ensuring there are
appropriate safeguards for user privacy and freedom of expression.

Children’s online safety is an issue of global importance. We also plan to work
with our international partners to develop and promote common solutions, shared
principles, and global standards that prioritize children’s wellbeing and
champion a free, open, and secure Internet.
End text.

Citations

1 - Pew Research, Teens, Social Media and Technology. 2023 Statistic: 95% of US
teenagers own their own smartphone (based on a survey of 1,453 teenagers).

2 - The latest NTIA Internet Use Survey of U.S. household estimates that 83
percent of 15-24-year-olds use smart phones
https://www.ntia.gov/data/explorer#sel=mobilePhoneUser&demo=age&pc=prop&disp=chart

3 - Ofcom, Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2024 –
interactive data. 2024 Statistic: 96% of UK teenagers own their own smartphone

4 - Ofcom, Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2024 –
interactive data. 2024 Statistic: In the UK, TikTok (66 percent), Snapchat (63
percent), and Instagram (58 percent) are popular among 12-17-year-olds

5 - Pew Research, Teens, Social Media and Technology. 2023

6 - Parents' and children's online behaviors and attitudes survey 2023. 30th
October to 27th November 2023. Statistic: 88 percent of UK children use YouTube
(this includes YouTube Kids)

7 - The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory, Social Media and Youth Mental Health.
2023

8 - Ofcom: Parents' and Children's Online Behaviours and Attitudes Survey 2023.
30th October To 27th November 2023. Table

9 - Online Health and Safety for Children and Youth: Best Practices for Families
and Guidance for Industry (July 22, 2024),
https://www.ntia.gov/category/kids-online-health-and-safety/online-health-and-safety-for-children-and-youth

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