The internet promised to save us time, but if we actually stand back and examine things, I believe that many of us spend a significant part of our lives cleaning up after it. Parents monitor devices, schools are increasingly being made responsible for collecting and handing back mobile phones at the start and end of each day, employers deal with workplace disputes that may have began on social media the night before. Our police forces investigate digital crimes, healthcare services try to support victims of online abuse; small businesses manage reputational attacks and fraudulent reviews. Ordinary people spend hours untangling scams, misinformation and identity theft.
Individual examples are mere flakes on the iceberg of online harm, but the irony is difficult to miss: platforms generating enormous revenues from digital engagement often bear only a fraction of the practical burden created by the harms that engagement can produce, the clean-up operation has been quietly outsourced to everyone else and the invoices keep landing in our lap on a daily basis…
What Are Online Harms?
The phrase “online harms” often gets reduced to a few headline issues. In reality, the list is extensive and continues to grow; for individuals and families, online harms can include:
- Cyberbullying
- Online harassment
- Trolling
- Hate speech
- Stalking
- Catfishing
- Sextortion
- Revenge pornography
- Identity theft
- Account hacking
- Online fraud
- Phishing scams
- Romance scams
- Financial scams
- Deepfake abuse
- Exposure to violent content
- Exposure to pornography
- Exposure to extremist content
- Misinformation
- Disinformation
- Doxxing
- Online grooming
- Child sexual exploitation
- Gaming-related abuse
- Gambling-related harms
- Privacy breaches
- Data theft
- Impersonation
- Reputation attacks
- Psychological manipulation
- Algorithmic addiction
For businesses, the list is equally significant including additional issues such as:
- Employee harassment originating online
- Cybersecurity incidents
- Social engineering attacks
- Business email compromise
- Fraudulent reviews
- Brand impersonation
- Fake social media accounts
- Intellectual property theft
- Reputation management crises
- Deepfake fraud
- Recruitment scams
- Customer data breaches
- Online blackmail
- Coordinated harassment campaigns
- Misinformation targeting brands
- Employee wellbeing issues linked to online abuse
- Productivity losses
- Compliance and regulatory costs
- Litigation costs
- Crisis communications costs
This is no longer simply an Internet problem, it is a societal problem that affects a significant majority of us !
The Great Skills Gap Nobody Talks About
But here is the uncomfortable question: who trained us to deal with any of this, let alone making us responsible for the fall outs? Most parents/grandparents/caregivers, businesses, employees have not received any formal training; and yet at times, we may feel that society increasingly expects us to act as:
- Cybersecurity specialists
- Digital investigators
- Child protection officers
- Mental health practitioners
- Reputation managers
- Fraud analysts
- Legal advisers
Imagine having to buy a new kettle and discovering that you needed to understand how to cope with electrical fires because it might burst into flames as well as know how to change its settings so that it did not take pictures of you half asleep in the morning and share them on a screen in your workplace reception.
Yet when digital harms emerge, the expectation often falls upon users to become the expert.
“Have you adjusted your privacy settings?”, “Did you recognise the scam?” , “Why didn’t you spot the fake account?”, “Why didn’t you identify the deepfake?”
At times, online safety advice can sound remarkably similar to asking car accident victims if they should consider driving to work in a tank. Yes, personal responsibility matters, but this is not the same thing as liability.
The Hidden Cost Paid by Families
Every hour spent dealing with online harm is an hour spent doing something we never signed up for… and yet these days, parents spend evenings monitoring devices and arguing with our children over screen use. Victims spend hours wondering how to report abuse and then weeks wondering if anyone will get back to them. People attempt to recover lost money from banks – it’s like trying to get blood from a stone…
Schools: Society’s Unofficial Digital Fire Brigade
Schools occupy a particularly awkward position in the online harms debate. Increasingly, they are expected to manage problems that originate outside school grounds and school hours and on privately owned devices. A disagreement that begins on social media on a Saturday evening can become a safeguarding issue by Monday morning. Schools are then expected to investigate, mediate, document, communicate with parents and support affected pupils, all this whilst doing attendance and morning assembly…
Alongside this, schools are increasingly expected to restrict phone use during the school day. This creates further practical responsibilities. Devices must be collected, stored securely, monitored against theft or damage and returned correctly. If hundreds of devices are removed from pupils each day, schools effectively become temporary custodians of thousands of pounds worth of personal property. This is a responsibility that most teachers did not enter the profession expecting to undertake.
Schools are also expected to educate children about online safety. This expectation is entirely reasonable. The challenge is consistency and capacity. How often does meaningful online safety education actually take place? Is it delivered weekly, monthly, once per term or only during an annual awareness event? Does every teacher have specialist training? Is the content keeping pace with emerging threats such as deepfakes, sextortion, online scams, AI-generated manipulation and evolving social media platforms?
The reality is that many schools are balancing extensive safeguarding responsibilities alongside already demanding teaching requirements. Online safety education often competes for time against core curriculum subjects, examination preparation, behavioural management and countless other obligations. As a result, the quality, depth and frequency of online safety education can vary significantly between schools.
This leaves an important question. If society believes online safety is as fundamental as road safety, stranger danger or basic health education, why is there still so much uncertainty about how often children should be taught these skills? We would not expect children to receive a single road safety lesson each year and then navigate traffic unaided. Yet when it comes to the digital world, one of the most complex and rapidly changing environments young people encounter, expectations and resources often remain unclear.
Once again, the pattern is familiar. The burden of managing online harms is pushed towards schools, teachers and safeguarding staff, while the platforms where many of the risks originate remain several steps removed from the day-to-day consequences.
The mental health impacts from online harms can persist for months or years – trauma
The time costs are rarely measured: how many working hours disappear each year dealing with scams? How many family hours are lost monitoring platforms? How many school hours are consumed investigating incidents that began online? How do schools cope with the additional pressures which have slid onto their shoulders, not forgetting the additional insurance costs and liabilities incurred with the daily handling of children’s mobile devices? How many healthcare appointments relate, directly or indirectly, to digital harms? Society pays for these costs.
The Business Cost Nobody Budgeted For
Businesses face a similar challenge.
A small company may spend thousands of pounds responding to:
- Fake reviews
- Fraudulent transactions
- Cyber incidents
- Staff wellbeing issues
- Brand impersonation
- Reputation attacks
Larger organisations spend millions.
They are often forced to employ cybersecurity teams, compliance specialists, legal advisers, communications professionals and risk managers; many still do not know of their obligations under the Online Safety Act 2023. None of these functions existed at today’s scale before the digital era. The costs are not optional, they are required in order to survive as a business and not get fined by Ofcom. The result is a hidden tax on productivity because resources that could be invested in innovation, growth and employment are instead redirected towards managing risks generated elsewhere.
The Public Sector Is Picking Up the Tab
Police forces investigate online offences; schools handle digital safeguarding concerns; our NHS supports victims of online abuse, addiction and exploitation; courts hear internet-related disputes; local authorities manage safeguarding interventions; regulators create new frameworks – taxpayers fund much of it. This creates a peculiar arrangement because online platforms generate revenue through digital activity and Jo Public and institutions absorb many of the downstream consequences. If any other industry created comparable levels of external cost, there would be robust debate about who should ultimately pay. How has this come about ?!
Online harms should be no different.
The Accountability Question
This is not an argument against technology, because there is no doubt that the Internet delivers extraordinary benefits – it connects families, supports businesses, enables education and drives economic growth. The issue is accountability: when harms occur at scale, responsibility should not automatically flow downward to parents, teachers, employers, police officers and taxpayers.
The organisations creating and operating digital environments must be expected to play a proportionate role in preventing foreseeable harms and mitigating their consequences.
Otherwise society remains trapped in a cycle where the profits are private and the clean-up costs are public.
The British Approach to the Problem
Britain has a variety of habits that the rest of the world sometimes find quirky: we queue politely and often use the weather as an intro to conversations. However when it comes to making laws, we complete forms, create committees to discuss and dabate, produce recommendations, set another working party to produce guidance, then create guidance to explain the guidance while the problem continues to grow.
There comes a point when endless mitigation becomes less effective than addressing root causes; online harms have arguably reached that point. I feel that we have become quite jaded about waking up every day to mop the floors and hear about the latest of harms. The question is whether anyone intends to turn off the tap.
What Can We Do Next?
The conversation needs to move beyond awareness and towards accountability. Here are 3 practical actions can be taken by organisations, community groups and concerned citizens when engaging with businesses, regulators and MPs:
- Demand Transparent Harm Accounting
Platforms should publish standardised reports showing the estimated societal costs associated with harms occurring on their services, including impacts on policing, education, healthcare and business productivity.
- Require Independent Harm Audits
Just as financial accounts are independently audited, major digital platforms should undergo regular independent assessments measuring the effectiveness of harm prevention, reporting systems and user protections.
- Establish a Digital Responsibility Fund
A proportionate contribution from major digital platforms could support education, victim services, cybercrime prevention, digital literacy programmes and safeguarding initiatives, helping offset costs currently carried by taxpayers, families and businesses.
Final Thought
The Internet has become essential infrastructure, but when infrastructure creates recurring societal costs, it is reasonable to ask who is footing the bill and why, because at the moment, it’s parents, businesses and public services who are paying the consequences.
Enough is enough !
