Tech firms must keep children's data if they die, under new plans

Source: BBC Technology

Prime Minister pledges faster action on children’s online safety

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to respond more quickly to close loopholes in laws designed to protect children online. He said no online platform will get a “free pass” over the issue of children’s online safety and promised to “crack down on the addictive elements of social media”.

Opponents accused the government of “inaction” and have called for Parliament to be given a vote on the social‑media ban for children.

The government had already said it would launch a public consultation in March, seeking opinions about restricting children’s access to AI chatbots and limiting infinite‑scrolling features for children – also known as doomscrolling.

The move follows arguments between ministers and X’s Elon Musk earlier this year, after the platform’s Grok AI chatbot was used to create fake nude images of women.

The government now wants to create new legal powers so it can take “immediate action” following the consultation. This would allow it to “act fast on its findings within months, rather than waiting years for new primary legislation every time technology evolves”.

Ahead of launching the consultation, Sir Keir said:

“The action we took on Grok sent a clear message that no platform gets a free pass. Technology is moving really fast, and the law has got to keep up. With my government, Britain will be a leader, not a follower, when it comes to online safety.”

The Online Safety Act – which became law in 2023 – was written before the release of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT. The government says it intends to close loopholes so the legislation covers these technologies.

Amendments will also be made to the Crime and Policing Bill to ensure chatbots protect users from illegal content. Other measures being considered include:

• Preventing children from using virtual private networks (VPNs) to illicitly access pornography.
• Requiring chatbots to protect users from illegal content.

In an article on Substack, Sir Keir noted that, as a parent of two teenagers, he knows children’s access to social media is “something that is front and centre of a lot of parents’ minds right now”. He added:

“In the past 20+ years, social media has evolved to become something completely different from the simple, stripped‑back pages it was in its conception. And in that evolution, it has become something that is quietly harming our children.”

The prime minister said the government will “bring new powers that will give us the ability to crack down on the addictive elements of social media, stop the auto‑play, the never‑ending scrolling, that keeps our children hooked on their screens for hours, and stop kids getting around age limits”.

“And if that means a fight with the big social media companies, then bring it on,” he said.

Jools’ Law and data preservation

There are also plans to change rules on how children’s social‑media data is stored under the Crime and Policing Bill, following the Jools’ Law campaign.

In 2022, Ellen Roome’s son Jools died aged 14 while attempting an internet challenge. She has never been able to access his data to prove what happened. Under current rules, a child’s data must be requested from tech companies within 12 months of their death by either a coroner or the police. By then, the records are often already deleted.

New rules would require data to be preserved within five days if it might be relevant to the cause of death, giving families a better chance of obtaining answers.

“This going forward will help other bereaved families. What we now need to do is stop the harm happening in the first place. This is really relevant when a child dies, but we need to stop them dying in the first place,” Roome said.

Lord Nash, a former Conservative minister campaigning for tighter social‑media controls for children, welcomed the adoption of Jools’ Law but urged the government to raise the age limit to 16 for the most harmful platforms.

Shadow education secretary Laura Trott described the consultation announcement as “inaction”, saying Britain was “lagging behind” and that “we should stop under‑16s accessing these platforms”. Liberal Democrat spokeswoman Munira Wilson accused the government of “kicking the can down the road” and called for a “much clearer, firm timeline” for action.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the government was “determined to give children the childhood they deserve and to prepare them for the future at a time of rapid technological change” and would “not wait” to take the action families need.