Tech Shock - from Parent Zone
Tech Shock: Everything you always wanted to know about tech and family life.Podcasting from Parent Zone,the media literacy experts, host Vicki Shotbolt explores the upsides and downsides of family life in the digital age. With a range of expert guests she looks at online harms to children ranging from pornography to gambling and at what should be done about them. Incurably optimistic, Vicki also celebrate the many benefits of tech for children and young people, as she considers how best to live in a world in which family life is now inescapably digital.Listen every Monday, subscribe, and give us a five star review.
Tech Shock - from Parent Zone
5. What's next for the Online Safety Act?
With Ofcom's duties and guidance around illegal harms and content, services’ transparency, the safety of women and girls, as well as the protection of children all being published in 2025, it’s undoubtedly an important year for the implementation of the Online Safety Act.
But with geopolitics becoming more unstable, tech companies pivoting in controversial ways – including Meta rewriting its policies on ‘hateful conduct’ and removing fact-checkers – and tech like generative AI becoming part of daily life, we have to ask: is the Act too vulnerable to external changes, and can it actually regulate the online world?
The Online Safety Act Network was set up to connect and inform civil society organisations on the status of the Act and its implementation. In this episode, the Network’s director, Maeve Walsh joins Vicki to help assess how the Act is faring currently, and how it might possibly fare in the future.
Talking points:
- To what extent are Ofcom overlooking safety-by-design measures in favour of addressing harms that have already occurred?
- Why are ‘small but risky’ services so controversial in the context of the Online Safety Act?
- How might the Government strengthen the Act against both global developments and developments in tech?
Tech Shock is a Parent Zone production. Follow Parent Zone on social media for all the latest on our work on helping families to thrive in the digital age. Presented by Vicki Shotbolt. Tech Shock is produced and edited by Tim Malster.
www
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
