Schedule 3: Timing of providers’ assessments User-to-user services likely to be accessed by children Section 13: Safety duties protecting children: interpretation
This section sets out how the child safety duties in section 12 are to be interpreted.
	Subsection (1) specifies factors which are particularly relevant in determining whether steps, systems and processes are proportionate. Subsection (2) makes clear that services are only required to fulfil the duty in section 12 in relation to the kinds of non-designated content (i.e. content that is neither primary priority content nor priority content but which would satisfy the test of being harmful to children in section 60(2)(c)) if risks from such content have been identified in the most recent children’s risk assessment.
	Subsection (3) explains that references in section 12 to children judged to be in age groups at risk of harm from content that is harmful to children, are to be read as being those who have been assessed as such by the provider in its most recent children’s risk assessment.
	Subsection (4) provides that the duties in section 12(3) and 12(9) (which require service providers to take steps to prevent or protect children from encountering harmful content and to specify those steps in their terms of service) apply only in relation to content which gives rise to a risk of harm due to its nature. It would not be feasible for providers to fulfil these duties for content that is only harmful by the fact of its dissemination. An example would be doxxing, where the content is not inherently harmful to children encountering it but its dissemination may be harmful to a particular targeted child. However, under section 12(2) companies have a duty to mitigate and manage the risks of harm to children on their service, including harm caused through the dissemination of content.
	Subsection (5) clarifies that the duties which are set out in section 12 extend only to those parts of the service which it is possible for children to access. Under subsection (6), a provider can only conclude that children cannot access a service, or part of a service, if age verification or age estimation is used on the service with the result that children are not normally able to access it.
	Subsection (8) signposts the fact that the duties about users’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy in section 22 are relevant to the safety duties for services likely to be accessed by children in this section.