UK adds self-harm, cyberflashing to priority offences

New online safety rules are arriving soon. On 18 December 2025, ministers made regulations that expand the Online Safety Act’s list of “priority offences”. They take effect on 8 January 2026 and matter if you use, teach on, or run online spaces where people can post or search for content.

When we talk about “priority offences”, we mean crimes listed in Schedule 7 of the Online Safety Act 2023. Services in scope of the Act - such as social platforms and search engines - must proactively reduce the chance that users encounter content which amounts to these crimes. Ofcom can investigate and fine services that fail to put proportionate systems in place.

One major change is the addition of section 184 of the Online Safety Act - encouraging or assisting serious self-harm - to the priority list. Content that instructs, pressures or actively helps someone to seriously harm themselves is now squarely in scope. Platforms are expected to design their services so this material is harder to create, recommend or spread, and to act quickly when it appears.

The regulations also confirm two sexual image offences in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 as priority offences. Section 66A covers sending a photograph or film of genitals without consent - widely known as cyberflashing. Section 66B covers sharing, or threatening to share, an intimate photograph or film without consent. These sections were inserted into the 2003 Act by the Online Safety Act 2023, and prioritising them strengthens the duty on services to stop this abuse.

For platforms and community managers, this translates into clearer terms, stronger reporting tools, better protection-by-default for younger users and designs that slow down the rapid forwarding of harmful material. The law uses the idea of what is “proportionate”, so the exact measures depend on a service’s size and risk, but the direction is clear: harmful content should be harder to find and faster to remove.

If you work in a school or college, this gives firmer ground for safeguarding. If a student receives an unwanted genital image or someone threatens to share their intimate photos, treat it as a potential crime as well as a wellbeing issue. Record what happened in line with policy, support the student, and consider police involvement where there is ongoing risk. For self-harm content, care comes first - but material that pushes someone to harm themselves should be reported to the platform and escalated through safeguarding channels.

For students and families, the message is straightforward. You do not have to accept image-based abuse or messages that tell you to hurt yourself. Avoid replying or resharing, keep evidence safely, use in‑app report tools, block the sender and tell a trusted adult. If you’re worried about someone’s safety, speak to a teacher or responsible adult straight away.

A quick media literacy check helps. Talking about mental health, recovery or sharing resources is not criminal. The offence targets posts that encourage or help another person to cause serious self-harm. Context matters: a supportive message is very different from a message that pressures someone to act or explains how to do it. When in doubt, show care and report the harmful content so trained teams can review it.

For transparency: the statutory instrument is published on the UK legislation website (legislation.gov.uk) as S.I. 2025/1352. It was made on 18 December 2025 by Kanishka Narayan, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. It applies across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It also revokes the 2024 regulations (S.I. 2024/1188) and replaces paragraph 28A of Schedule 7, retaining section 66B while adding section 66A. The government notes the change responds to the prevalence and severity of harm and expects the business impact to be below the de minimis threshold.

What to watch next: Ofcom will continue to oversee compliance and services will update their safety policies to reflect the new offences. Share this explainer with your class or group, review your online conduct rules, and make sure your reporting routes are clear. This article is educational and not legal advice.