Technology and digital envrionments

Orygen submission: Digital duty of care

Orygen supports the Online Safety Amendment (referred to throughout this submission as the Digital Duty of Care) as an important regulatory measure to reduce young people’s exposure to online harms, strengthen the safety of online environments and complement broader government investments in youth mental health and wellbeing.

The Digital Duty of Care should require online services to demonstrate that measures intended to prevent exposure to harmful content, including self-harm and suicide-related content, are effective in practice. This should include appropriately trained moderation systems, regular evaluation of safety measures, and ongoing collaboration with social media companies, mental health experts, researchers, policymakers and young people with lived experience.(3) This would help ensure that safety measures are evidence-based, responsive to user needs, and effective across different developmental stages.