Facebook and TikTok ‘should be given Ofcom safety ratings’

Tech giants like Facebook and TikTok should be given Ofcom safety ratings, says the mother of a 13-year-old boy murdered by teenagers in a plot hatched on social media.

Amanda Stephens, whose son Olly was lured to his death in a park by the teenagers, has worked with a leading think tank to produce a blueprint to protect children who are being routinely exposed to violence online.

The research by Crest Advisory, a specialist crime think tank, found that 31 per cent of under-18s had seen content showing fights, one in five (19 per cent) had experienced threats of assault or knife violence and one in seven (14 per cent) had viewed content about gangs.

Their report, published on Wednesday, calls for watchdog Ofcom to develop a five-star rating system that would tell parents and children how safe social platforms were for them.

It also recommended an Ofcom “alerts” system so that parents, children, police and other agencies could be warned about threats on social media platforms from systemic failures or individual breaches.

Amanda Stephens said: “We gave Olly a mobile phone to keep him secure, so we could keep in contact with him on his journey to school or whilst he was out with friends, so we could know where he was and his distance from home, so that he was safe.

“The reality is, that in giving your child their first phone, they have access to the online world, a world that is not safe for them. Our children live in an online world that means danger is close, it’s under your roof, it can attack them 24 hours a day, there is no respite from its harm.

“The Government should listen to the findings from this report when they bring back the Online Safety Bill. Social media companies must be held accountable for the safety of children using their apps.

“Please do not be naive as a parent, don’t be like we were, we are left to grieve the loss of Olly for the rest of our lives.”

Compulsory age verification

Olly Stephens was stabbed to death by two teenage boys, aged 13 and 14, after he was lured into an ambush by a 13-year-old girl through multiple communications on platforms including Snapchat, Whatsapp, Facebook, TikTok, Zoom, FaceTime and several other apps.

Their plan – to lure Olly to the park and confront him – had been hatched on social media; the girl never met the two boys in person until an hour before the fatal confrontation.

In the four days leading up to the stabbing, nearly 2,000 SnapChat voice notes had been sent between the four young people involved. The two boys were found guilty of murder and sentenced to 12 and 13 years in custody. The girl admitted manslaughter and was sentenced to three years and two months in custody.

The report also called for compulsory age verification and public information campaign offering advice on healthy and unhealthy patterns of social media use.

An Ofcom spokesman said: “The protection of children sits at the heart of the online safety regime and we welcome new research and evidence in this area.

“Once the new [Online Safety] laws take effect, we will publish and consult on draft Codes of Practice and Guidance setting out the steps tech firms can take to comply with their duties to protect children from harm.”