‘Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Children!’ – Online content promoting/encouraging self-harm and the law: A socio-legal study

With a new communication offence having been proposed by the Law Commission and adopted in the draft Online Safety Bill, this article considers how the law should deal with online content promoting/encouraging self-harm to adequately protect victims, with a particular focus on children. To do so, I consider three pertinent issues: the adequacy of existing communication offences; the need to balance freedom of expression concerns against factors weighing in favour of restrictions; and the different conceptions of the child as influences to justify protection. From these analyses, overall, I argue that the Law Commission’s proposal is inadequate and insufficient as a means of protection and offer suggestions for improvement accordingly.