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Children in the UK will be better protected from harm as some of the largest and most popular sites and apps agree to introduce significant new anti-grooming measures in response to Ofcom’s public call for action

• Snap, Meta and Roblox to adopt further safety measures to protect children from stranger danger online
• Ofcom steps up scrutiny of TikTok and YouTube after they failed to set out how they will make their recommender feeds safe for children
• Regulator advises that gap in legislation needs closing to force firms to keep underage children off their platforms

Snap, Meta and Roblox have confirmed to the regulator that they will bring in new safety measures designed to better protect children from online strangers who wish them harm - ranging from tighter default settings for children’s contacts and friendship groups, to AI detection tools and direct chat controls.

These new commitments are included in a report, which confirms how major platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Snap, TikTok and YouTube – have responded to Ofcom’s demands in March to urgently strengthen protections for children online.

Under the new commitments secured for UK users, children’s safety will be considered upfront by platforms before new features are rolled out to them. In response to our call to end product-testing on children, five of the services have committed to notify the regulator whenever they update their risk assessments before making  significant changes to their services – going above and beyond their duties under the Online Safety Act.[1] This will ensure that Ofcom is aware of new products and features before they launch, allowing us an opportunity to scrutinise any adverse impact on children.  

Despite these important improvements, there are areas where the response from tech companies raises serious questions. We are particularly concerned about the lack of action from some platforms to make their feeds safer. Similarly, we are not convinced that the commitments from platforms with a strict minimum age of 13 will effectively prevent underage children from accessing their services.

Given these outstanding concerns, we have announced a five-point action plan to drive further change and hold platforms to account for the safety of children on their platforms.

Further protections to tackle grooming 

Online grooming can have devastating, lifelong consequences for victims and we demanded action from tech firms to introduce failsafe online protections for children against adult predators.

In response, Snap has agreed to make significant and long-overdue changes by adopting all the recommended grooming prevention measures under our Illegal Harms Codes. As a result, adult strangers will be prevented from contacting children on Snap by default, and children will no longer be encouraged to expand their friendship groups to people they don’t know. These protections apply only to children using Snap in the UK, and mean they will have stronger safeguards against grooming than users in other countries. The platform will also roll out highly effective age-checks to all users over the summer to ensure that all under-18s in the UK benefit from these new safety measures. 

Roblox has committed to build on its existing anti-grooming protections, announced earlier this year.[2] The company will now go even further, including by giving parents the ability to switch off direct chat services entirely for under-16s.

Meta has committed to developing a new setting that will hide teens’ connection lists on Instagram by default. The company also plans to roll out AI tools to detect likely sexualised conversations between adults and teens in Instagram direct messages, to report offending accounts to the NCMEC, and to take necessary enforcement action.

We are clear that these commitments must now translate into action. We’ve set clear deadlines by when we expect to see these changes in place and will be scrutinising how effectively they are implemented. We also want to see Meta go even further to prevent grooming and are pushing the company to adopt the network expansion prompts safety measure set out in our Illegal Harms Codes.[3]

If these promised improvements happen too slowly, or are not properly implemented, we will not hesitate to act. 

More action needed to make feeds safer for children

Content feeds are children’s primary pathway to harm and we are deeply concerned by the overall response from industry to our challenge to fix the problem.

Meta pledged to extend its 13+ “movie‑style” content settings currently available on Instagram to Facebook, which it says will make its feeds safer by limiting the content teens see to a more age-appropriate level. While this is encouraging, it is too early to tell whether this will meaningfully reduce harm in practice.

Notably, TikTok and YouTube failed to commit to any significant changes to reduce harmful content being served to children, maintaining their feeds are already safe for children. Our wealth of evidence, published yesterday, suggests they are still not safe enough.[4]

Since the children’s online safety duties came into force in July 2025, there has been little change in children’s overall exposure to harmful content, with nearly three-quarters of 11- to 17-year-olds (73%) encountering it in a four-week period. Just over a third (35%) of these children recalled exposure to harmful content when they were ‘scrolling on their feed’. Half of secondary school aged children who see harmful content recall coming across it on TikTok (53%), followed by YouTube (excluding YouTube kids) (36%), Instagram (34%), and Facebook (31%).

We are sharing these concerns with government as it concludes its consultation: Growing up in the online world.[5]

We have already issued in-depth, legally-binding requests for information to Meta, TikTok and YouTube on how they detect and prevent children being exposed to harmful content and are currently interrogating their responses. In order to independently verify what services are telling us, we are exploring using new inspection powers under the Online Safety Act. This would require firms to undergo an independent audit - carried out by a skilled expert in this field - and allow us to issue remote inspection notices to observe how services’ content detection, moderation systems, algorithms and age-checks are working in real time.

We are determined to drive change by all means necessary, unless services can demonstrate urgent and credible action plans to make feeds safer for children. Any service that ultimately fails to comply with their duties to protect children, can expect enforcement action.[6]

Tougher legislation to underpin minimum age enforcement

Despite acknowledging the importance of minimum age policies, none of the companies with a minimum age of 13 on their services convinced us that they are currently enforcing them effectively and the impact is clear. Our latest research shows that 84% of children aged 8–12 are still using one of the top five reaching online services (YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat) despite a minimum age of 13.[7]

Current online safety laws do not explicitly require services to keep underage children off their platforms by using robust age checks, although the Information Commissioner’s Office can take action in this area under data protection law. [8] We have written to the Secretary of State to advise that, should Government and Parliament wish Ofcom to be able to force firms to enforce minimum age policies effectively, this would need a clearer basis in online safety legislation.

Holding tech firms to account

Ofcom’s public scrutiny of these six online services will continue under our five-point action plan. We will continue to drive change by: 

1. Monitoring the implementation of services’ new commitments to ensure they work in practice to better protect children.
2. Continuing to review evidence on recommender feeds and explore whether to use new inspection powers, with a further update in July.
3. Launching enforcement action where we have grounds to suspect non-compliance with the Online Safety Act.
4. Continuing to monitor the real-world experiences of children online through our world-class research.
5. Engaging with Government on the outcome of its consultation so that enforcement of minimum age policies under online safety laws can be strengthened where needed.

Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s Chief Executive said: “These changes have the potential to make children’s lives safer online. Ofcom’s sustained public and private pressure on the tech platforms where children spend most time has delivered some significant safety improvements - particularly against grooming. However, more change is needed, and we remain deeply concerned that, despite overwhelming evidence of harm, companies are still failing to take the necessary action to keep underage children off their platforms and make their feeds safer. 

“We are determined to force through further changes, using the full extent of our powers and influence. We will also bring our evidence and experience to bear as the government considers responses to its national conversation on children’s safety and social media.”

Chris Sherwood, CEO of the NSPCC, said: "For far too long, tech giants have dragged their heels by refusing to address the harmful and addictive content flooding children’s feeds and putting them at risk. This is why we strongly support Ofcom challenging tech companies and demanding transparency on how they plan to improve their platforms to protect children. 

“We welcome the news that Snapchat is introducing highly effective age assurance as a step in the right direction to protect children online. This is a crucial change if measures to prevent grooming are going to make a difference for children in practice. 

“However, it is deeply concerning that tech companies are still failing to recognise and address the harmful nature of their algorithms. These systems are at the heart of children's online experiences. We must see these services go further and be held accountable for transformational change which puts children's safety and wellbeing at the centre of platform design."

Notes to editors 

1. Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Snap, TikTok and YouTube made this commitment. TikTok said they would notify us where required.
2. Roblox has already taken action to make it harder for adults to contact children they do not know by turning off voice chat for U13s, and introducing highly effective age assurance to allow children to chat only with users in similar age groups, with the exception of trusted friends. https://about.roblox.com/newsroom/2026/04/introducing-roblox-kids-and-select-accounts
3. Our Illegal Content Codes recommends default settings to ensuring that:
   • network expansion prompts do not recommend child user accounts to connect with; and
   • users are not presented with network expansion prompts when operating a child user account.
4. Understanding how children experience life online is at the heart of our work. We have published a comprehensive package of research that takes an in-depth look at children’s online worlds, from the time they spend on sites and apps, the devices and services they use most, the benefits they enjoy, to the harms they encounter:
   • Understanding children’s experiences online
   • Children and Parents Media Use and Attitudes
   • Children’s Media Lives
   • Children’s Online Safety Tracker
   • Children’s Passive Online Measurement

To read a summary of the top trends from these reports, visit our news centre.

In the coming months we will also report on how effectively age-checks are working in the UK to protect children from pornography, and whether additional safety measures at the app store level could improve children’s online safety.

5. The Government’s consultation included proposals to restrict children’s access to services built around personalised feeds.
6. The report is not an assessment of what impact the changes will have, as they have not yet been implemented. Rather it provides a snapshot illustrating the services’ willingness to make changes to improve children’s online safety following our challenge. In addition, this report is not an assessment of services’ compliance with the Act.
7. YouTube (63%), TikTok (45%), Snapchat (32%), Facebook (27%) and Instagram (24%) are among the most widely used platforms by underage children, despite setting minimum ages of 13. Users must be at least 13 years old to use YouTube. Under 13s may use YouTube through a supervised account (with parental consent). Our research is unable to establish the extent to which under 13s were accessing YouTube via their own accounts or a supervised account.
8. The ICO has given an update on its age assurance work.