Ofcom Warns Search Engines Facilitate Access to Harmful Content

Research reveals over 20% of search results link to content promoting self-harm, suicide or eating disorders.

UK regulator Ofcom warns that major search engines, including Google, Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo! and AOL, can act as gateways to harmful web pages, images and videos showing suicide and self-harm.
Research carried out for Ofcom analyzed more than 37,000 links returned by the search engines, finding that more than one in every five of these results linked to content which celebrates, glorifies, or offers instruction about non-suicidal self-injury, suicide or eating disorders.
Image searches were particularly risky, with half leading to harmful or extreme results, and nearly three in ten web pages and 22% of videos did the same.
People are six times more likely to find harmful content about self-injury when entering deliberately obscured search terms.
Ofcom acknowledges that search engines are doing a good job in signposting help, support and educational content, with one in five search results linking to content focused on getting people help.