Why harmful content keeps reaching children online – and what advertising has to do with it

By Karen Middleton, Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Advertising, University of Portsmouth

Children today can encounter harmful material online with alarming ease, including violent, sexual and self-harm content. While this is often treated as a moderation failure, the deeper cause is economic.

Much of the internet is built on a business model that rewards attention above all else. In simple terms, algorithms that recommend content do not meaningfully distinguish between helpful, neutral and harmful material. Described as “topic agnostic”, their primary task is to keep…

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