To regulate against online harms, we must understand both mental health and the digital environment
The UK debate over regulating “online harms” advanced this week with the long-awaited publication of the government’s response to the consultation on its White Paper, presaging first an Online Safety Bill and then, we hope, an Act by 2022. While much will be said about the online harms regulation to follow, probably it’s only researchers who noticed that some of the evidence is yet to be published – important since regulation must be evidence based, particularly in such a contested domain. Some evidence, it must be said, is difficult to obtain, and to interpret, especially in relation to children and young people who are vulnerable or at risk.
When my colleagues and I began the Evidence Group for the (then) UK Council for Child Internet Safety (now UKCIS) over ten years ago, we were keen to differentiate among children and young people – too often lumped together by media and policy makers – to recognise the diversity and inequalities that characterise their circumstances, since these shape their online experiences and outcomes. In an early paper on the digital pathways of vulnerable young people we examined whether their outcomes are worse than those of more resilient young people because their starting points (in the offline world) are so different, or because of what happens to them online.
Ten years on, it is clearer that both life circumstances and online experiences matter (as shown by our “online harms” evidence reviews on children and adults for DCMS). It is also clear that the on/offline distinction is becoming harder to draw (which is not the same as saying that it makes no difference). After all, the last decade has seen a startling level of technological innovation, moving from technology as a valued add-on to our lives to technology as its vital infrastructure. As COVID-19 has made very clear, life, especially for the young, is now digital by default, with some worrying consequences for mental health.
UKCIS’s focus has always been on digital innovation, regulation and policy, in an effort to “make the UK the safest place to be online,” and it has found it harder to understand the mental health needs of vulnerable young people. But it must, because in recent years, exacerbated by present circumstances but definitely predating them, we have been facing what’s been called a “mental health crisis” – in the level of suffering, and in society’s lack of capacity to respond.
It is too simple solely to blame mental health problems on the supposed twin evils of screen time and social media, for the explanation is far from clear-cut. But insofar as the digital environment plays a key role within a more complex explanation, online harms regulation is important. The UKCIS Evidence Group, along with many other researchers, are committed to informing the definition, measurement and scale of “the problem”, and the understanding of its causes, consequences and possible solutions. Progress has been made in that research now more often disaggregates “children and young people” – say, by age, gender and class. But, specifically in relation to research on online harms, the categories of “vulnerability” or “mental health” remain little disaggregated by problem or diagnosis.
On the other hand, the more that I collaborate with mental health experts, the more I see that, while mental health is new for those long concerned with the digital, the nature of the digital is still rather new for those long experienced in the mental health difficulties of young people. There appears a confusion of terms – notably, a tendency to talk about “social media” as a catch-all term (though it excludes a lot), little recognition of the plethora of digital products and services used by young people, and more focus on devices and screens than on the design, affordances or business practices that underpin them (and which the Online Safety Bill will seek to regulate).
Consequently, research and policy concerned with online harms and the mental health of young people brings together (at least) two kinds of experts – those knowledgeable about digital technologies for whom “mental health” is still uncharted territory, and those knowledgeable about mental health for whom digital technologies are a somewhat feared and little investigated “black box,” although serious efforts are being made. To generate the evidence and understanding needed to guide regulation of the digital environment in the interests of children and young people, it’s vital to bridge gaps in expertise and build a multidisciplinary understanding that can both improve the evidence base and inform the policy debate to come.
In a recent webinar held jointly by the UKCIS Evidence Group and the UKRI Nurture Network, we took some constructive steps towards doing exactly this. You can watch it here. Click here to read Elena Martellozzo’s blog on the webinar.
Sonia Livingstone
eNurture Deputy Director
