Ofcom has commissioned research with adults and professionals to improve its understanding of how adults engage with and are affected by suicide, self-harm and eating disorder content.
This qualitative research explores the ways in which adult internet users are encountering and interacting with content promoting Suicide, Self Harm and Eating Disorders (SSHED). Based on qualitative interviews with 30 people who have experience of engaging with this content, and 5 professionals who do relevant work with adults, the report details the pathways through which people can come in to contact with this content and the impact it can have. People with lived experience of harm also shared their perspectives on the role of platform tools that can be used to navigate relevant online content.
CONTENT WARNING: This report contains distressing discussions of people’s experiences with suicide, self-harm and eating disorders as well as online content that promotes these.
Ofcom’s role
- This research was conducted to engage with people who have lived experience of harm and build on our existing evidence base around adults’ experiences of online content including illegal harms. It complements other Ofcom research studies on children’s experiences of this content and accessibility from search engines. We also monitor encounters with this content alongside other kinds of potentially harmful content in the Online Experiences Tracker and Children’s Online Safety Tracker.
- In our Online Safety work, regulated services must have systems and processes in place to protect internet users from illegal suicide and self-harm content. For SSHED content that does not meet the threshold for illegal content, regulated services must protect children from encountering this, and in some circumstances, larger services must offer adults user empowerment tools to reduce their likelihood of encountering it. Understanding how people encounter and navigate hateful content online is also relevant to our media literacy duties.
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