Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to protect (1) children, and (2) vulnerable adults, from online encouragement to pursue behaviours that may lead to eating disorders.

Under the Online Safety Bill, companies which run websites which are likely to be accessed by children will need to take steps to prevent their child users from encountering self-harm and eating disorder content. All in-scope services will also need to address any other content (“non-designated content”) which risks causing significant harm to an appreciable number of children.

The largest services will also need to enforce their own terms and conditions, which often prohibit such content, and offer all adult users tools to give them greater control over the content they see. These tools will apply to content which encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for an eating disorder or behaviours associated therewith, and will reduce the likelihood that users who do not wish to encounter this content will do so.

The Government has also committed to introduce a new communications offence of intentionally encouraging or assisting serious self-harm, including eating disorders, where it meets the criminal threshold. Once introduced, companies will need to treat this content as illegal under the framework of the Bill, taking steps to remove this content once they become aware of it.