Children are being “bombarded” with harmful products online, including weight-loss drugs, steroids and skin-whitening chemicals, a study has found.
Research conducted for the children’s commissioner for England found that teenagers were routinely exposed to harmful products on social media, video games and apps.
Among 13 to 17-year-olds, 41% said they had seen prescription-only weight-loss drugs, 27% had seen potentially toxic skin-whitening creams and 24% had seen steroids and other drugs claiming to build muscle mass.
Young people reported seeing these harmful products in lifestyle influencer content on social media, in advertising from small-scale content creators and in gaming, despite many of these being banned for under-18s.
The report comes as the government consults on a potential social media ban for under-16s. But the children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, said such a ban would not provide an “immediate guarantee” that children would be safer online.
She said: “Extreme and potentially dangerous appearance-changing products are being normalised to children through advertising, influencer culture and online posts, despite many of these products being unsafe, illegal or strictly age-restricted.
“For their developing and fragile sense of self-esteem, this is immensely damaging.
“Any ban must respond to what children think and how they behave online, with a clear plan of how it will be enforced so that it does not drive children to other, darker parts of the internet.
“Urgent action is needed to create an online world that is truly safer by design. We cannot continue to accept an online world that profits from children’s insecurities and constantly tells them they need to change or must be better.”
More than half of children said they had seen ads for food and drinks claiming to aid weight loss, and similar numbers had seen exercise and diet plans. One in five had bought or tried weight-loss foodstuffs, while 8% had bought or tried non-prescription weight-loss pills.
Some children reported adverse reactions after trying appearance-changing products they had seen online, including infections from eyelash products that contained undisclosed chemicals.
More than three-quarters of the 2,000 teenagers polled said that being exposed to these products had a negative effect on their self-esteem.
The report follows previous research from the children’s commissioner that found just 40% of girls and 60% of boys were happy with how they looked.
Two-thirds of children (66%) had seen teeth-whitening products online and more than half of girls (56%) had seen cosmetic procedures such as fillers or Botox, despite these procedures being illegal for under-18s.
The findings also revealed stark ethnic inequalities, with black children more likely to say they had tried these weight-loss products. There were also much higher proportions of black and Asian teens reporting that they had seen ads for skin-lightening creams, despite many of these products being illegal in the UK.
As well as restricting children’s access to some social media platforms, the report calls for a ban on all advertising to children on social media, strengthening Ofcom’s children’s code of practice to explicitly protect children from body stigma content, and stronger regulation and enforcement of online sales of age-restricted products to ensure that children cannot buy them.
A government spokesperson said: “The Online Safety Act includes some of the strongest online safety protections in the world and just this week we launched a dedicated campaign helping parents to support their children in dealing with harmful content such as body-shaming, rage bait and misogyny.
“We were always clear that the act wasn’t the end of the conversation, nor is anything off the table when it comes to children’s safety.
“That’s why we’re launching a national consultation on bold measures to protect children online, from banning social media for under-16s to tackling addictive design features.”
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