As a mum to two sons who are now 20 and 16, like most parents, I've had to adapt to what feels like the most fast paced, changing time in history thanks to the internet and phones. Despite campaigning for women's safety for years and personally receiving abuse and harassment online and being stalked, it's only since coming here to the Home Office and having access to child abuse data that I've truly understood the extent of harms that exist online.
I was shocked to learn that the ages of people who perpetrate child sex abuse are getting younger and younger. When people ask what's behind this, the only thing that I can point to is the fact that everyone now has a device in their hands showcasing the most violent forms of pornography or people talking about ending their life.
For example there are children who have taken their own lives because they have faced sextortion online and others facing imprisonment for sexually harmful behaviours towards other children. There are countless accounts.
From today, several online safety changes are coming into effect to protect kids and young people. Age checks have been rolled out, making it harder for young people to see harmful content. Internet algorithms that recommend similar content will be adjusted to not push young people towards harmful recommendations, problematic content will have to be removed quicker and it will now be easier to report problems if and when they arise. These are important changes.
The way these policies will work is that they're going to stop children from seeing the worst online content. When it comes to harmful - but legal - material i.e. online misogyny, kids up until now haven't had to seek this content out. It's pushed to them within a few clicks. Companies will now to address and alter the algorithms that drive children towards a horrendously misogynistic space. Of course, we have to wait and see what happens after these measures have come into effect and then observe their impact. They have the real potential to be game-changing, and if they aren't then the Government has committed to and will do more. We want to hear feedback on all of them too.
If I'm brutally honest, I know my kids could hide stuff from me.
I sympathise with parents right now. In my own experience, it's quite hard to monitor what your kids are doing online. I respect their privacy to a certain extent. I was a naughty teenager myself: I broke the rules, I stayed out, and lied to my parents saying I was in place I wasn't. But that said, teachers in my constituency tell me a lot of the issues that they face at school has nothing to do with events at school. They're nearly-always because of something that's occurred on a WhatsApp group or online where horrible things have been said. At that point, I would say to my sons, 'You're going to have to let me read your messages now. There's been a complaint, and it wasn't necessarily about you, but you're in this group and now I've got to intervene.'
But if I'm being brutally honest, I know they could definitely hide stuff from me. So me monitoring their phone every five minutes wouldn't help. My sons have to help me turn the television on. I've literally never been on TikTok. They're aware there's a knowledge disadvantage when it comes to tech. I'm not the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
So I really understand how difficult it is for parents who need the language to be able to speak to their kids about the internet and online harms. There needs to be more work on generational literacy of these issues.
On a personal level, I am impossible to embarrass. And so my approach has been to sit with my children and sometimes speak in gruesome detail about the differences between what they might be seeing in porn and what real-life healthy sexual relations looks like. We've watched Sex Education together.
But ultimately it's the responsibility of governments to make the internet safer for children. I also don't know how to make cars safe, and that's why I rely on government regulation to do that. A parent's responsibility is to use the safety techniques that have been provided to you by the law.
Jess Phillips has been the MP for Yardley Wood since 2015. She served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls since 2024.