Olly Stephens: Social media links to violence investigated

Researchers worked with the parents of Olly Stephens who was stabbed to death in 2021

Links between harmful social media content seen by children and serious violence have been underestimated, a report has found.

Criminal justice consultancy Crest Advisory has called for a safety rating system to limit children's access to social media content.

Its researchers worked with the parents of Olly Stephens who was murdered in Reading, Berkshire, last year.

His father said he had been "groomed, abused and murdered via social media".

Olly's family have campaigned for stricter online laws to stop harmful content being shared after it transpired the attack on him was planned on 11 social media platforms.

A girl lured 13-year-old Olly out of his house, while the boys who murdered him waited in fields near his home to attack. Two boys, aged 14, were found guilty of his murder.

Olly's parents have campaigned for stricter online laws

The report, entitled Fixing Neverland and funded by charity The Dawes Trust, found that young people are routinely exposed to videos of violent acts and adverts for weapons.

It said the technology sector and government organisations have had a "collective blindspot" about the relationship between social media and serious youth violence.

It concluded that social media can "amplify" conflict and "accelerate" its route towards violence.

Olly's mother, Amanda Stephens, said the government should consider the report's findings for the stalled Online Safety Bill.

"Our children live in an online world that means danger is close, it's under your roof, it can attack them 24 hours a day, there is no respite from its harm.

"Social media companies must be held accountable for the safety of children using their apps," she said.

His father, Stuart Stephens, said: "There's also an anger that these companies are getting away with it. They don't care."

Key recommendations also included better education about social media as well as standardised age verification controls to make it much harder for children to view harmful material.

It called for a "five star" rating scale for social media platforms to indicate how safe they are for children, compiled by the communications watchdog, Ofcom.

Joe Caluori, Crest Advisory's head of research and policy, said children were spending increasing amounts of time in "unregulated, unsupervised online spaces".

"Our research shows that parents of primary school aged children are unprepared for the risks their children face online, including petty spats which are allowed to escalate quickly, resulting serious violence which causes life changing injuries and even death, as in the tragic case of Olly Stephens."