Protecting children

Our transparency notices inform the public of ongoing research under the Online Safety Act to understand children’s experiences online, including how AI chatbots and social media services may expose underage users to harmful content.

A notice explaining how, in support of our online safety research, Ofcom will sometimes create accounts with fictional personas.

We’ve published our latest research into how children spend their time online and interact with different forms of media.

A dedicated page compiling data on experiences of age assurance, VPN use, and attitudes towards Protection of Children measures.

This report brings together findings from our comprehensive research programme to understand how children experience the online world, including their use of services and exposure to harmful content before and after new children’s safety duties came into force.

This page provides an overview and links to our findings from our livestreaming research, including two qualitative reports and one quantiative report into children who create and children who view livesteams.

The insights help Ofcom to stay informed about the opportunities and challenges some young people are facing online, to better understand their digital experiences and consider emerging risks.

This is a research report written by Protect Children and commissioned by Ofcom which presents the results of findings from a dark web survey of perpetrators who are actively searching for child sexual abuse material.

Ofcom has commissioned a survey of UK internet users aged 16+ who self‑report having accessed pornographic content online, to understand how they access such content and their past experiences with age checks.

This page contains details of an online randomised control trial to test different ways to encourage children to choose to use content controls to restrict exposure to harmful content during the sign-up process of a mock social media platform.