Social media sites are failing to protect girls from online harm at ‘every stage’, according to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), which claims some of the most popular platforms are leaving users vulnerable to grooming, abuse and harassment.

In its latest report, Targeting of Girls Online, the children’s charity warns that features built into social media platforms, messaging apps, and online gaming push girls to expand their online presence, but can come at the cost of their safety.

The NSPCC’s research, which surveyed more than 3,500 UK adults, found that just 9% of girls feel safe in online spaces, with their top concerns being contact from strangers (41%), online grooming (40%), bullying from other children (37%) and sexual abuse or harassment (36%) when online.

Around half of parents (52%) expressed concern over their daughter’s online experiences, with 86% of adults agreeing that tech companies are not doing enough to protect girls under the age of 18.

The study, delivered alongside PA Consulting, mapped the typical user journey of girls online, documenting the design features encountered when registering an account, editing user information and engaging with others.

The NSPCC said its analysis revealed that ‘risky’ design features are built into the entire user journey, which encourage girls to share private and personal information and communicate with strangers, with platforms placing the responsibility on girls to protect themselves online.

“We know both on and offline girls face disproportionate risks of harassment, sexual abuse, and exploitation. That’s why it’s so worrying that these platforms are fundamentally unsafe by design, employing features and dark patterns that are putting girls in potentially dangerous situations,” said Rani Govender, policy manager for child safety online at NSPCC.

“Parents are absolutely right to be concerned about the risks their daughters’ are being exposed to online, with this research making it crystal clear that tech companies are not doing nearly enough to create age-appropriate experiences for girls.”

With its research, the NSPCC is calling on tech companies to rethink how social media platforms are designed and prioritise creating age-appropriate experiences for young girls online, and has offered a swathe of solutions for firms looking to increase the safety of users.

Among those, the charity would like to see all services doing ‘abusability studies’ to find risky features and functionalities before rolling them out, with these tests including a gendered analysis of likely risk. 

It also wants social media apps to introduce a cooling-off period once a connection is made between users, to put some restrictions on interactions.

The NSPCC said apps should also make use of screenshot capabilities as a reporting function, along with automatically detecting identifiable information in profiles, as well as better measures to prevent non-trusted adults from being able to video call younger users.

Earlier this year, Ofcom proposed new measures that tech firms should take to tackle online harms against women and girls, and called on tech organisations to promote safety-by-design in their platforms.

Recommended reading

• FOMO Keeping Girls Online Despite Sexism and Anxiety
• Ofcom Issues New Online Safety Guidance to Protect Women & Girls
• Creating Deepfakes To be Criminalised in UK

However, the NSPCC is urging the regulator to do more, saying that there are significant gaps in its Illegal Harms Codes which fail to take into account specific risks.

The NSPCC wants Ofcom to develop best practice guidance for regulated services to outline how safety settings and other protections can be adapted based on children’s age, and then to work with service providers, especially those most popular with children, to implement this guidance.

“There needs to be a complete overhaul of how these platforms are built,” continued Govender.

“This requires tech companies and Ofcom to step up and address how poor design can lead to unsafe spaces for girls.”