The House of Commons is holding a Parliamentary Debate led by Ian Sollom MP on Thursday 19 March 2026.

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The CPRMB produced a Parliamentary Briefing which can be found here: Briefing

In summary:

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The political discourse, debate and policy on online harms should take a gender-sensitive lens so that it fully includes the online harms affecting men and boys alongside the harms affecting women and girls. Currently the focus is primarily, if not exclusively, on the latter. This does not help women and girls affected by the outcome of online harms that men and boys experience.

Ofcom, as mandated by the Online Safety Act (2023), is required to produce specific guidance for platforms to assess risk and to protect women and girls from online harms. The welcome guidance was produced by Ofcom in November 2025 after a lengthy consultation and titled “A safer life online for women and girls.” It has so far refused to start working on similar guidance for men and boys and requires apolitical instruct for them to do so.

The policy request is for similar guidance for men and boys (“A safer life online for men and boys”) who on the one hand are exposed to similar types of online harmful content to women and girls. But there are also clear differences in the types too. And even when there are similar types - the impact, framing and the actual content is likely to be different. These risks are also much more known now than when the Act was introduced.

Dramas such as Adolescence and Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere alongside a range of new research has shown thee interest in online harms affecting men and boys but this has not been matched by policy responses focused on men and boy bar general policy on misogyny and pornography . Online harms affecting men and boys are not being seen as a distinct and whole issue.

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