Children's Online Experiences Including a comparative analysis of the periods before and after the children's safety duties came into force

Ofcom published comparative research on May 21, 2026 examining children's exposure to harmful content before and after children's safety duties under the Online Safety Act came into force, drawing on data from the Children's Online Safety Tracker and Children and Parents Media Use and Attitudes report. The analysis found that 11- to 12-year-olds remained more likely than older children to report exposure to harmful content while playing online games, and that while this age group saw a decline in exposure via group chats, exposure via private messages increased from less than 1 percent to 5 percent. The report also identified that children using X were as likely as TikTok users to encounter harmful content despite TikTok's far higher usage rate among children.

Shifts in harm from group chats to private one-on-one messages underscore why platform-level moderation leaves a gap: the conversation where a groomer escalates from friendly contact to coercion happens in direct messages beyond the reach of public content filters. A world-leading AI online-safety platform, Guardii monitors those private conversations in real time for the behavioral signature of grooming, sextortion, and age-inappropriate contact across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, reporting the shape and seriousness of the conversation rather than handing anyone a feed of what was said, so a parent or school can intervene when a child is in crisis and law enforcement can act quickly when a crime is in progress.