Reporting resources laws: selected rules for parents

Most parents start with one question: was it illegal? You cannot answer that from your kitchen table, and acting on your own answer is how evidence gets deleted.

Reporting resources laws do not answer it either. They can shape what a platform, school or police unit must do after a report reaches them. Several rulebooks are in play, and this page surveys selected laws and regulators and the reporting routes they lead to.

What to take away

Rules and who sets them

Most parents assume criminal law governs everything. In the first fortnight, school policies and platform procedures often shape what actually happens.

Selected laws and regulators parents may encounter

United States: COPPA and the state age-verification wave. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, covers children under 13. It requires verifiable parental consent before a platform collects their data, and the amended COPPA Rule took effect on 23 June 2025.

The amendments restrict nudging children to keep scrolling. FTC civil penalties are adjusted for inflation each year and sit above $50,000 per violation. The FTC keeps plain-language material on children's online privacy, and its reporting route for parents is direct: if you think a site has collected information from your child or marketed to them in a way that violates the law, report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

States have moved separately. Texas HB 1181 survived review in June 2025, when the Supreme Court decided Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. Florida's HB 3, which requires age checks for under-16s, has taken effect and is in federal court. California's Age-Appropriate Design Code Act has been under an injunction since 2023.

Utah, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia run their own age-check statutes. So the operative rule in your state in 2027 may be a statute, an injunction, or neither. Only your state attorney general's office can tell you which.

United Kingdom: the Online Safety Act 2023. Ofcom is the regulator. The Act places duties on platforms to assess and mitigate risks to children, and Ofcom publishes codes of practice and timetables for when each duty bites.

The children's codes came into force on 25 July 2025. Highly effective age checks for pornographic services began the same day. Ofcom's roadmap sets out remaining duties and first transparency reports through 2026; consult the current roadmap for individual dates.

Breaking a safety duty can cost a platform up to £18 million or 10 percent of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is higher.

European Union: the Digital Services Act. It has applied to all online intermediaries since 17 February 2024, with the largest platforms covered from August 2023.

It requires notice-and-action systems, transparency reporting and risk assessments covering minors. It also bans advertising based on profiling where the platform knows the user is a minor. Fines reach 6 percent of global annual turnover.

National Digital Services Coordinators enforce it, coordinated by the Commission, which has opened formal proceedings against X, TikTok, Meta, AliExpress and Temu.

Canada: Bill C-63 stopped, Quebec's Law 25 runs. The federal Online Harms Act was introduced in February 2024 and died when Parliament prorogued in January 2025, so treat headlines about it as proposals.

Quebec's privacy framework for minors requires parental consent for anyone under 14 and has banned advertising to under-13s since June 2024. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner and its provincial counterparts enforce the provincial rules.

Australia: the under-16 social media ban. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 received assent on 1 December 2024. Its obligations begin on 10 December 2025, requiring platforms to take reasonable steps to keep under-16s off age-restricted services.

The eSafety Commissioner takes complaints.

Schools, everywhere. District cellphone bans in Florida, California and Colorado, and provincial restrictions in several Canadian provinces, changed what a school may do during the day.

Whether a school must act on something that happened at eleven at night on a platform it has never heard of depends on its own published policy and the framework above it.

The Department for Education in England publishes guidance for schools, Preventing and tackling bullying, and alongside it a separate document of advice for parents and carers on cyber bullying. The guidance applies to England, is written for school leaders, staff and governing bodies, and covers all schools. It shows the shape such a framework takes, and it is the document to ask an English school about when it says something happened outside school.

What none of these laws will do for you

A correctly read rule, in the right country, on the right day, tells you very little about the next hour.

It will not say whether to involve the school. It will not say what to say to your child tonight. It will not say whether the friendship group they rejoin on Monday is survivable.

School guidance covers what a school can reach. When strain lasts weeks and crosses into sleep, eating and school at once, mental wellbeing covers speaking to a doctor without waiting for the process to finish.

The cases where you do not stop to research

Some situations are not research problems; they call for prompt reporting.

Report these to the professionals who categorize them. In the United States they reach dedicated investigative units, described by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in its task force program for internet crimes against children.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children runs the CyberTipline for reports involving images of minors, and takes them at 1-800-843-5678. NCMEC says its CyberTipline collects leads from the public, and offers a 24-hour, toll-free hotline at 800-THE-LOST (800-843-5678).

Elsewhere the equivalent is your own police service.

Reporting resources covers the order of operations, including preserving evidence before anyone is blocked.

Common questions

Do I need to know it is a crime before I call the police?

No, and waiting until you are sure is the most common way a report gets delayed. Describing what happened is enough. Sorting it is their job, and they would rather look at something that turns out to be nothing.

Does 2027 change any of this?

The rules described here mostly have earlier effective dates; this overview does not identify a specific new 2027 start date. Ofcom's children's codes took effect on 25 July 2025, and remaining duties run through 2026. Australia's under-16 obligations started on 10 December 2025.

The Digital Services Act covers every platform, with fines up to 6 percent of global turnover. US state age-verification statutes are partly in force and partly under injunction. Read the current wording with the body that publishes it, and note the date you checked.

The school says it happened outside school, so it is not their business. Is that right?

That depends on the framework they work inside and on their own policy, and no page can settle it. Ask which policy they are relying on, ask for it in writing, then use the escalation route that policy names.

Can I be in trouble for keeping evidence?

For ordinary messages and posts, keeping a dated record is exactly what you should do. Images of a minor are the exception: do not collect, copy or forward them. Describe what exists and report it. Ask the police service where you live rather than deciding this yourself.

This page is general information for parents, not legal advice. Rules differ by country, region, district and service, and change; check the current wording with the body that publishes it, or take advice where you live.