Statement: Protecting children from harms online

Today we are publishing a major policy Statement for the protection of children online.

This decision marks a major milestone, with providers of online services that are likely to be accessed by children in the UK now being legally required to protect children from content that is harmful to them. The Protection of Children Codes and Guidance published today build on the rules that we have already put in place to protect all users, including children, from illegal harms such as protecting children from being groomed and sexually exploited.

In May 2024, Ofcom published proposals about the steps providers should take to address content that is harmful to children on their services. Since then, we have been consulting carefully and widely, listening to companies, children’s safety campaigners and other organisations – as well as children and their guardians.

In particular, we listened carefully to what children thought of our ideas, in a deliberative engagement programme that involved workshops and interviews with children around the UK. We have published our deliberative enagagement report today.

With today’s publication, providers must take action to comply with these rules. The result will be a safer life online for children in the UK.

Providers of online services in scope of the children’s duties now have to complete and record children’s risk assessments by 24 July 2025. Subject to the Codes completing the Parliamentary process, from 25 July 2025, they will need to take the safety measures set out in the Codes or use other effective measures to protect child users from content that is harmful to them. We are ready to take enforcement action if providers do not act promptly to address the risks to children on their services.

We have published five volumes setting out our decisions, together with a number of regulatory documents and guidance. These are listed below.

The breadth and complexity of the online safety framework means the documents we are publishing today cover many areas. We have therefore also published:

• A summary of the measures in the Codes and the user-to-user and search services to which they apply.
• A summary of our decisions which sets out the feedback we received from stakeholders, and the decisions we have taken.

In the coming weeks, we will also be updating our resources for services to take account of the new children’s duties.

We have also updated our existing record-keeping and review guidance to include specific guidance on record-keeping for children’s risk assessments.

Alongside this statement, we are consulting on proposals that seek to expand the application of our blocking and muting user accounts and disabling comments measures in the Illegal Content Codes to a wider range of services. This is because we now consider it would be proportionate for these measures to apply to certain smaller services that are likely to be accessed by children. We welcome stakeholder comments on these proposals by 5 PM on 22 July 2025. 

These resources will help you better understand our decisions and your subsequent duties.

Volumes