Instagram and TikTok have been accused of ‘gaming’ the Online Safety Act as legislation comes into force, with their algorithms continuing to recommend suicide, self-harm and depression content at an ‘industrial scale’, according to research from the Molly Rose Foundation.

In the weeks leading up to the new regulations taking effect, the suicide prevention charity said that self-harm content was still being recommended to teens, which it warned was ‘actively putting young lives at risk’.

Almost eight years on from the death of Molly Russell, the study found depression, suicide and self-harm content being recommended by Instagram and TikTok to accounts opened by researchers posing as a 15-year-old girl.

While the initial research was conducted prior to the provisions of the Online Safety Act coming into force, the Foundation said that the social media platform’s algorithms ‘continue to bombard’ young people with harmful content.

The charity’s report, Pervasive By Design, said that almost all of the videos recommended to the account by Instagram Reels (97%) and TikTok (96%) were found to be harmful.

According to the Foundation, more than half (55%) of the recommended harmful posts on TikTok’s For You Page actively contained references to suicide and self-harm ideation, and 16% referenced suicide methods, which it said ‘glorified’ suicide and normalised intense feelings of misery and despair.

The report found that one in ten harmful videos on TikTok’s For You Page had been liked at least a million times, while on Instagram Reels, one in five harmful recommended videos had been liked more than 250,000 times.

Researchers concluded that the material recommended by both TikTok and Instagram would have the same harmful impact as content which Molly Russell saw before her death in 2017.

Ian Russell, Molly’s father and chair of Molly Rose Foundation, said: “It is staggering that eight years after Molly’s death incredibly harmful suicide, self-harm and depression content like she saw is still pervasive across social media.

“Ofcom’s recent child safety codes do not match the sheer scale of harm being suggested to vulnerable users and ultimately do little to prevent more deaths like Molly’s.”

The report comes as Ofcom begins implementing its children’s safety codes under the Online Safety Act, and previously said that tech firms would be forced to ‘tame toxic algorithms’ to protect children online.

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The regulator specifically called out the use of recommender algorithms, cautioning that social media platforms’ systems should not operate in a way that harms children by offering large volumes of ‘unsolicited, dangerous content’.

However, Molly Rose Foundation said it has concerns that the measures are not strong enough, with Ofcom’s Protection of Children Codes of Practice estimating that social media companies could spend as little as £80,000 to exclude harmful content from recommender feeds, with ongoing costs of just a few thousand a year.

The charity said that Ofcom should revisit the scope and ambition of its current approach, as the regulator’s ambition is currently dwarfed by the magnitude of high-risk design features, and also recommended that the UK Government strengthen Online Safety Act provisions in this area.

“It is crucial that Ofcom’s response lives up to the scale of the harm children are facing online, but the regulator is currently falling short,” said Gregor Poynton, MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on children’s online safety.

“We urgently need to tackle these issues head on and parents will rightly judge us by whether we do everything possible to protect their children from this pervasive and preventable harm.”