By Cassandra Popham, Ellie Taylor and William Teager

The Youth Endowment Fund surveyed over 10,000 teenage children (aged 13-17) in England and Wales about their experiences of violence. The findings are detailed across five reports, each focusing on a different aspect. In this second report, we examine teenage children’s experiences of violence on social media. We aim to understand its prevalence, the nature of the content the children encounter and its impact on their lives. Here’s what we found. Violence is widespread on social media. Exposure to real-life violence on social media has become the norm rather than the exception for teenage children. Our findings reveal that 70% of respondents have encountered some form of real-world violence online in the past 12 months. The most frequently observed content is footage of fights involving young people, with 56% of respondents reporting that they’ve seen such videos. Other common types of violence witnessed online include threats of physical harm (43%) and content related to gang activity (33%) and weapons (35%). Notably, one in nine children who say they’ve encountered weapon-related content have seen footage involving zombie knives or machetes — a figure significantly higher than the 1% of 13–17-year-olds who’ve reported that they carry such weapons, as highlighted in our first report. This suggests that social media may amplify fear by making certain behaviours appear more widespread than they are. Sexually violent content or threats have been reported by more than a quarter of teenage children (27%). For the second year in a row, TikTok is the platform where children are most likely to witness violent content.  While the majority of teenage children encounter violent content online, few actively seek it out. In fact, only 6% of those who’ve come across such content do so intentionally. Most are exposed to it inadvertently: half (50%) have seen it via someone else’s profile or feed, and just over a third (35%) have had it shared directly with them. Alarmingly, 25% of children have reported that the social media platforms themselves promote this violent content through features like ‘Newsfeed’, ‘Stories’ and the ‘For You Page’. This underscores the significant role social media companies play in amplifying exposure to violent content beyond what users might encounter by chance. Seeing violence online has real-world impacts. Viewing violent content online has impacts that extend far beyond the screen. The vast majority (80%) of teenage children who encounter weapons-related content on social media say it makes them feel less safe in their local communities. This perceived threat has tangible consequences: two-thirds (68%) of teenagers who’ve seen weapons on social media say it makes them less likely to venture outside, and 39% admit that it makes them more likely to carry a weapon themselves. The influence of social media doesn’t stop there. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of teenagers who report perpetrating violence in the past year say that social media has played a role in their behavior. Factors like online arguments and the escalation of existing conflicts are commonly cited as catalysts for real-world violence  Children support limiting access to phones and social media. The widespread exposure to real-world violence online may partly explain why many teenagers believe that access to social media should come later than access to smartphones. Our findings highlight the responsibility of social media companies to remove or restrict harmful content. They also point to the need for effective support and education to help children navigate these dangers while still benefiting from the positive aspects that social media can offer.  

London: Youth Endowment Fund, 2024. 28p.

By The Children’s Commissioner for England

This report draws together research from focus groups with teenagers aged 13-19 and a survey of 1,000 young people aged 16-21. Of the 64% who said that they had ever seen online pornography: • We find that pornography exposure is widespread and normalized – to the extent children cannot ‘opt-out’. The average age at which children first see pornography is 13. By age nine, 10% had seen pornography, 27% had seen it by age 11, and half of children who had seen pornography had seen it by age 13. • We also find that young people are frequently exposed to violent pornography, depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sex acts; 79% had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18. Young people expressed concern about the implications of violent pornography on their understanding of the difference between sexual pleasure and harm. Indeed, this report finds that frequent users of pornography are more likely to engage in physically aggressive sex acts. • Pornography is not confined to dedicated adult sites. We found that Twitter was the online platform where young people were most likely to have seen pornography. Fellow mainstream social networking platforms Instagram and Snapchat rank closely after dedicated pornography sites. At the time of publication, the UK’s landmark Online Safety Bill is making its way through Parliament. It holds the promise of, finally, regulating pornography sites and ensuring that they implement robust age verification to protect children. Now is a vital moment to ensure that we understand the impact of pornography on children’s lives, and to legislate for a commensurate response. This report is published as the Online Safety Bill passes through Parliament. The legislation, as currently drafted, imposes important age verification requirements (technical measures to establish someone’s age) on platforms which host pornography to prevent under-18s from accessing adult content online. The research contained within this report syntheses data from a nationally representative survey of over 1,000 young people aged 16-21 in England and two focus groups with teenagers aged 13-19. All research was conducted between November 2022 and January 2023 by the Children’s Commissioner’s Office (CCo) with an aim of understanding the prevalence of pornography exposure (both intentional and unintentional) among young people and its impacts on children’s safety and wellbeing. Differences between groups are only reported where they were statistically significant. The Commissioner intends for this report to aid Parliamentarians as they make crucial decisions about the protection of children from harmful content, including pornography, through the Online Safety Bill. The Commissioner also hopes that findings from this research will support the regulator, Ofcom, in their future enforcement regime, as well as parents, teachers and other key professionals, to understand and protect children from pornography’s impacts. The main research findings are set out below. Unless otherwise indicated, figures refer to young people who have ever viewed pornography. • Pornography consumption is widespread among children. The average age at which children first saw pornography was just 13 years old. • Many children are first exposed to pornography at a very young age. A significant minority of children access pornography at very young ages: 10% had seen it by age nine, 27% had seen it by age 11 and 50% of children had seen it by age 13. • Children often stumble accidentally across pornography online; 38% of 16-21-year-olds said that they had accidentally come across it online. In focus group discussions, young people told the CCo that accidentally viewing pornography for the first time made them feel ‘confused’, ‘insecure’, ‘troubled’ and ‘curious’. Chillingly, some young people spoke about the role of sexualised cartoons, depicting popular children’s characters and which appear in pop-up ads, in actively grooming young children towards adult pornography. • A significant minority of young people are sent explicit images involving a person known to them in real-life. Girls are disproportionately the target of ‘self-generated’ pornography, 51% of girls aged 16-21 had been sent or shown explicit content involving someone they know in real-life, compared to 33% of boys. • Twitter is the platform where the highest percentage of children had seen pornography; 41% of young people reported having seen it on Twitter. Dedicated pornography sites came next (37%), followed by Instagram (33%), Snapchat (32%) and search engines (30%). • Many young people seek out pornography online. Half (50%) of survey respondents, 58% of boys and 42% of girls, aged 16-21 said that they sought out online pornography themselves. • A significant proportion of males are frequent users of pornography. A fifth (21%) of males aged 16-21 viewed content at least once a day in the 2 weeks prior to the survey, compared to just 7% of girls. This is suggestive of a dependency which carries its own risk of interrelated harms. • Boys and those who first viewed online pornography at age 11 or younger were significantly more likely to become frequent users of pornography, consuming it twice or more per week. Focus group participants told us that pornography was sought for several reasons; sexual gratification, curiosity and to ‘learn’ about sex, and pressure to ‘fit in’ with peers. • Children are frequently exposed to violent pornography. The majority, 79%, of 18-21-yearolds had seen content involving sexual violence before turning 18. Early exposure to pornography and frequent consumption significantly increased the likelihood of viewing violent content. Young people are significantly more likely to see violence perpetrated against a woman (65%) than against a man (29%) in pornography. • A significant proportion of young people seek out violent pornography; 36% of young adults had sought out content involving at least one act of sexual violence. Again, a young age of first exposure and frequent consumption of pornography were predictors in the likelihood of actively seeking out violent content for sexual gratification.   

London: Children's Commissioner for England, 2023.   48p.