Laws are introduced globally to reduce ‘psychological harm’ online – but there’s no clear definition of what it is

This article was originally published on The Conversation on 19 August 2025.

  <p>Several pieces of legislation across the world are coming into effect this year to tackle harms experienced online, such as the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50">UK’s Online Safety Act</a> and Australia’s <a href="https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/department/media/publications/online-safety-amendment-social-media-minimum-age-bill-2024-fact-sheet">Online Safety Act</a>. There are also new <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-government/government-canada-digital-standards.html">standards</a>, <a href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L_202402847">regulations</a>, <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-118s90rs">acts</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-product-security-and-telecommunications-infrastructure-product-security-regime">laws</a> related to digital products (including smart devices such as voice assistants, virtual headsets) and services such as social media platforms. </p>

<p>Of the many harms these types of legislation are designed to address, “psychological harm”, “mental distress” or similar terms are commonly included. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, when psychological harm and the like are referred to, there is typically <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17577632.2024.2357463">no detailed corresponding definition of them</a>. But while we might have an intuitive understanding of what psychological harm is, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2025.2510923">we still need precision on what it means in law</a>. This means evidencing what it is, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2025.2496242">agreeing on how to measure it</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2025.2496232">designing the best methods to tackle it</a>. </p>

<p>How do we do this? An obvious place to look <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2025.2496233">is psychological science</a>. </p>

<h2>The origin story</h2>

<p>The earliest reference to psychological harm <a href="https://orangelabel.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/1951-Psychological-Warfare-US-Navy-War-College.pdf">was made in the 1940s</a>. Back then, it was about the destabilising impact of war propaganda and the use of psychology to subvert people’s understanding of reality. Psychological harm <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-194409000-00006">was a broad term</a>, which also applied to those witnessing the horrors of war on the front line.</p>

<p>In the <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/1247119">1950s</a> and <a href="https://www.soilandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/0303critic/030321status/status.pdf">1960s</a>, psychological harm was more associated with advertising tactics that aggressively exploit people’s emotions and insecurities.</p>

<p>Fast forward to the early 2000s, and tools for assessing <a href="https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lcrp.12212">psychological harm</a> emerged alongside clinical assessments of mental health disorders. For instance, research on <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-013-9925-5">abuses experienced online</a>, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/s0033291702006074">cyberbullying</a> and <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/12/1449">cyberstalking</a>, documented several psychological impacts. These ranged from withdrawal from social groups, self-doubt and reduced self-esteem to mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety and PTSD. </p>

<p>More terms entered into clinical and forensic lexicons, such as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2648.2003.02938.x">“psychological distress”</a>, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-00276-013">“psychological damage”</a> and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12207-020-09396-5">“psychological injury”</a>. All of them concern some form of mental adverse experience which may happen immediately or as a delayed reaction to traumatic events. </p>

<h2>Where we are now</h2>

<p>In reviewing the 80 years’ worth of work in clinical, forensic and cognitive psychology, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2025.2491086#d1e130">here is what I see</a> as the major issues concerning psychological harm. </p>

<p>There is no agreement as to where to draw the boundary between psychological harm or related concepts and mental disorders outlined in the diagnostic manual called <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm">DSM-5-TR</a> (such as depression, anxiety or personality disorders). </p>

<p>There is also <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2691169/">no standardised measure</a> of psychological harm or psychological distress or damage. For instance, if we just take social media, there are different metrics that vary even on how they measure negative mental experiences on <a href="https://doi.org/10.24839/2325-7342.JN29.2.129">Tiktok</a>, <a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2023.0222">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01612840.2025.2488328">Threads</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2017.10.007">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.106217">Youtube</a> and <a href="https://mental.jmir.org/2024/1/e58259">Weibo</a>.</p>

<p>Why does this matter? Take for example <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2015.05.013">cyberbullying</a>. There are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1000504">17 tools in existence to measure psychological harm</a>. And because the tools don’t all align, we don’t have an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-023-04542-0">accurate picture of rates</a> of psychological harm. Some tools are too narrow in scope – they fail to include severe cases that require psychiatric treatment. And other assessments are too broad – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12207-019-09367-5">failing to exclude</a> those that are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2020.101952">malingering</a>.   </p>

<p>What’s more, how we perceive and experience adverse events, which can be very serious and debilitating, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/str0000280">vary – they are subjective in nature</a>. Research in clinical and forensic psychological recognises this. These disciplines have spent time establishing standards of assessment when supporting legal decisions <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12207-020-09396-5">for ensuring appropriate punitive measures</a> when we face terrible situations. </p>

<h2>Three practical suggestions</h2>

<p>For legislation to do the job of guarding against psychological harm from serious adverse experiences online and through digital technologies, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12207-020-09396-5">forensic psychology offers a path forward.</a> </p>

<p>The first thing is to have an agreed definition. For example, in 2025, the psychologist <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2025.2496235#d1e111">Amanda Heath</a>  proposed a viable general-purpose definition as “a sustained drop in stable functioning, negatively impacting wellbeing”. </p>

<p>This works in the same way as legal requirements for defining physical harm, which needs a baseline of functioning to show how an injurious event causes a change to it. The severity of the damage varies, based on, say the length of recovery (such as a week, a month, a year, never). In the same way, the length of recovery from exposure to illegal content online would indicate the severity of the psychological harm experienced.  </p>

<p>Second, there should to be a process for demonstrating causality between a particular adverse event online and the harm itself. So far, there doesn’t appear to be any set criteria laid out in online safety or harm acts for establishing causality. </p>

<p>Again, legislators could learn from forensic research, which outlines <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12207-025-09531-0">two levels in psychological injury cases</a> that establish causality – psychologically and legally. Forensic psychologists weigh the evidence for the relative ratio of pre-existing and event or post-event factors to determine causality using something called <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12207-025-09531-0.pdf">counterfactual analysis</a>.</p>

<p>For example, sometimes people have pre-existing injuries, vulnerabilities, or psychopathologies. So in such cases there needs to be a baseline, where the evidence shows how an indiviudal’s conditions have been exacerbated by experiencing an injurious event. For example, if we applied this analysis to psychological harm experienced online it would work like this. Forensic psychologists would weight the evidence to determine that, in the absence of seeing the illegal content, an individual would not have experienced PTSD to the same extent that they are experiencing it currently. </p>

<p>Finally, there need to be standards for the evidence used to show causality between a particular adverse event online and the harm itself, which we don’t yet see in current online safety or harm acts. </p>

<p>In <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-04105-000">forensic psychology</a>, on the other hand, the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-69734-0_1?">legal standards of evidence are high</a>, requiring independent corroboration of psychological impacts. This is where psychiatric assessment tools of PTSD, depression and anxiety are used along with other sources of evidence. Physical outcomes (such as neurological damage) and behavioural outcomes (such as substance abuse, self-harm) are also required. </p>

<p>To serve the public, the law needs to improve. This can’t be achieved without a fleshed out definition of psychological harm, tools of assessment and a framework that traces a causal path from the injurious content to the harm it is considered to have caused.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/263061/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p>

  <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/magda-osman-708478">Magda Osman</a>, Professor of Policy Impact, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-leeds-1122">University of Leeds</a></em></span></p>

  <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/laws-are-introduced-globally-to-reduce-psychological-harm-online-but-theres-no-clear-definition-of-what-it-is-263061">original article</a>.</p>
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