Boris Johnson told: 'Stand-up to social media' to protect our children

It has been 18 months since the government published its Online Harms White Paper and pledged to make the UK “the safest place in the world to be online”.

England’s children’s commissioner Anne Longfield is frustrated at the delay and has repeated her concerns that technology companies cannot be relied upon to regulate themselves.

Furthermore, in a new report this week, Ms Longfield warns that the introduction of end-to-end encryption messaging by technology giants could make it much harder for platforms to detect grooming, scan for child abuse material and share reports with law enforcement agencies.

It states: “The five most popular messaging services used by children – WhatsApp, Snapchat chats, Instagram DM, Facebook Messenger and Apple iMessage – are already fully end-to-end encrypted by default, have made public their plans to become so in the near future, or have indicated that they are considering the possibility.”