Internet users who encourage self-harm could be jailed for up to five years, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has said.
Additions to the Online Safety Bill will make it a crime to encourage someone to cause serious self-harm, regardless of whether or not victims go on to injure themselves.
The offence will add to existing laws which make it illegal to encourage or assist someone to take their own life.
Ministers previously announced the promotion of self-harm would be criminalised but on Thursday confirmed the maximum penalty for the offence upon conviction would be imprisonment for five years.
‘Cowardly Trolls’
Police or prosecutors will only have to prove communication was intended to encourage or assist serious self-harm amounting to grievous bodily harm—this could include serious injuries such as broken bones or permanent scarring.
General encouragement of self-harm, starving, and not taking prescribed medication will be covered by the law, the MoJ said.
The offence will apply even where the perpetrator does not know the person they are targeting.
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk said: “There is no place in our society for those who set out to deliberately encourage the serious self-harm of others. Our new law will send a clear message to these cowardly trolls that their behaviour is not acceptable.
“Building on the existing measures in the Online Safety Bill, our changes will make it easier to convict these vile individuals and make the internet a better and safer place for everyone.”
Molly Russell’s Suicide
The measures adopt a 2021 Law Commission recommendation that individuals responsible for encouraging or assisting serious self-harm should be better held to account by criminal law.
They follow the case of Molly Russell, a teenage girl who took her life after being exposed to graphic self-harm and suicide content online.
Russell, a 14-year-old girl from Harrow, northwest London, who her father said showed no obvious signs of mental illness, took her own life on Nov. 21, 2017.
After Molly’s death, her father Ian Russell said the family had found several dozen Instagram accounts Molly had followed with tags such as sad, lonely, or depressed, and one they looked at had graphic self-harming images.
He also said Pinterest had sent the teenager automated messages recommending depression-related content based on her browsing history.
Following a five-year inquest, a coroner concluded in September 2022 that “negative effects of online content” were a contributing factor in her death.
Coroner Andrew Walker said some content “romanticised acts of self-harm by young people on themselves,” while other content “sought to isolate and discourage discussion with those who may have been able to help.”
Regulating Online Spaces
The Online Safety Bill, which will be the first major set of regulations for the internet anywhere in the world, is intended to “protect children from harmful content such as pornography and limit people’s exposure to illegal content, while protecting freedom of speech.”
Under the bill, the biggest social media platforms such as Google, Twitter, and Meta must carry out risk assessments on the types of harms that could appear on their services and how they plan to address them, setting out how they will do this in their terms of service.
Communications regulator Ofcom will have the power to fine companies failing to comply with the law up to 10 percent of their annual global turnover.
The bill has been criticised by politicians within the Conservative Party as well as free speech activists such as the Free Speech Union, who warn of the bill’s consequences for the freedom of expression.
In July 2022, Tory MP David Davis said that “the bill could end up being one of the most significant accidental infringements on free speech in modern times.”
And in May of that year, leading media law expert Gavin Millar, KC, wrote in a legal opinion for the freedom of expression campaign group Index on Censorship that everyone who uses the internet will be affected by the Online Safety Bill, and that it will “significantly curtail freedom of expression in a way that has profound consequences.”
PA Media contributed to this report.
