Security News > 2020 > January > Teen entered ‘dark rabbit hole of suicidal content’ online
Ian Russell backs the report's findings - particularly its calls for government and social media companies to do more to protect users from harmful content, not only by sharing content but also by funding research with a "Turnover tax" that will also provide training for clinicians, teachers and others working with children, to help them identify children struggling with their mental health and to understand how social media might be affecting them.
Scheduled to go into effect in April 2020, it will impose a 2% levy on the revenues of search engines, social media platforms and online marketplaces that "Derive value from UK users." That 2% will be assessed on digital companies' global turnover.
Dr. Bernadka Dubicka, chair of the child and adolescent faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists and co-author of the report, said that she's seeing more and more children self-harming and attempting suicide as a result of their social media use and online discussions.
It is time for government to step-up and take decisive action to hold social media companies to account for escalating harmful content to vulnerable children and young people.
The College said that the data to be collected from tech companies would be anonymous and would include the nature of content viewed, as well as the amount of time users are spending on social media platforms.