The technology secretary has apologised to a generation of children who have been let down by governments failing to keep them safe from toxic online content.<\/p>\n
Peter Kyle said the length of time it had taken to bring in laws to keep children safe online had \u201csold a whole generation of children downstream\u201d and that politicians must find a way to act more swiftly in the face of rapid technological changes.<\/p>\n
Kyle made the remarks in an interview with Mumsnet, the parenting website, to mark the introduction of online safety measures for children that will put more responsibility on internet companies to protect them from harm. He said it was \u201cthe biggest step forward for a young person\u2019s experience online since the internet was created\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI want to apologise to any kid who\u2019s over 13 who has not had any of these protections, to parents who have strived and failed to keep their kids free from all this content because we have let them down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyle said it \u201ccannot be allowed to happen again\u201d that urgent safety measures made necessary by technological advances should take seven years to come into force. He said a whole generation of children had been exposed to \u201ctorrid toxic material\u201d because of the failure of politicians.<\/p>\n
Kyle is under pressure to go further in clamping down on social media use by children, and his department has been looking at curfews and time limits to help prevent addiction. Beeban Kidron, a crossbench peer and prominent internet safety campaigner<\/a>, urged Kyle on Thursday to update the Online Safety Act to include measures tackling disinformation and the addictive nature of social media platforms.<\/p>\n Kyle told Mumsnet he was looking at things that could be done \u201cvery rapidly\u201d and called for \u201ca national conversation about what a healthy childhood looks like online\u201d. \u201cWe do it offline all the time. Parents set curfews and diet and exercise as part of the language and the vocabulary within families. We haven\u2019t had that national debate about what health looks like and a healthy childhood looks like online yet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Justine Roberts, the founder and chief executive of Mumsnet, said the legislation would help stop children being exposed to damaging and inappropriate content online. But she said it must \u201conly be the beginning\u201d of changes to online safeguards for children, with teenagers spending 35 hours a week on smartphones at a cost to their mental health.<\/p>\n \u201cBig tech platforms still expose too many children to harm through addictive algorithms, and parents are deeply worried about the effects of social media on the still-developing brains of their children. The government must go further and faster to protect kids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The legislation means that<\/a> illegal content must be removed from platforms, such as suicide forums, and age has to be verified to ensure anyone under 18 cannot see harmful content. X announced on Thursday that it would introduce age checking measures to prevent under-18s from accessing adult content, including pornography.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Kyle suggested banning smartphones for teenagers was not the answer because many parents wanted to be able to monitor their children and for them to have travel passes on phone wallets, communicate online and pay for things digitally. \u201cKids themselves overwhelmingly say make us safer online, prevent us from seeing things we shouldn\u2019t be seeing. But please don\u2019t take the phones [away from us] because also, there\u2019s a lot of benefits to it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Asked whether he could raise the digital age of consent to 16, Kyle said that would be an easy thing to do if he concluded it was right.<\/p>\n \u201cThe question for me is, what age should children be allowed to be online and have access to social media, rather than the digital age of consent,\u201d he said. \u201cI can pass the law, as I have, that says that no child under 13 should have access to social media, if you are having it from 13 up it has to be age appropriate from 13 up. So no child under 18 should have access to porn for example. No child under 13 should have violent misogyny coming into their feed. I don\u2019t think digital age of consent would deliver the step-change that people think it would.\u201d<\/p>\n This article was amended on 25 July 2025 to clarify the parameters of existing lesgislation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The technology secretary has apologised to a generation of children who have been let down by governments failing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[64,63,237,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-23488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-internet","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}