Anti-bullying campaigner concerned over online safety
Alex Holmes began his work in Northamptonshire
Last updated 15th Jan 2025
Alex Holmes says he's concerned the Online Safety Act doesn't go far enough.
He is the founder of the peer-to-peer Anti-Bullying Ambassadors Programme, which he began aged just 16. It's expanded to now work with 5,000 schools across the world. The programme is a network of trained young people dedicated to preventing all types of bullying, particularly in schools.
Alex founded his work after experiencing the issue personally. He was also a recipient of The Diana Award 2004, and is now Deputy CEO.
Dr Tessy Ojo CBE, CEO, The Diana Award says:
“Alex’s pioneering leadership and passionate commitment to young people has been immense. He is an inspiration to so many young people at The Diana Award who have been impacted by his work. This highly deserved award is especially poignant as it also comes at the end of The Diana Award’s 25th anniversary year.”
After receiving recognition for his work on a wider scale, Alex was recently named on the New Years' Honours for services to young people. He'll receive an OBE.
Of his work, he says announcements over Ai technology could have benefits recognising online bullying, but there are issues:
"The difficult thing with harmful behaviour is that often it relies on context to establish where the line has been crossed because it could be that someone is using a derogatory word to talk about their own experience or to call it out.
"It's not as clean cut as just being able to use technology to identify and remove that. It's where mistakes could be made.
"There are concerns that the Online Safety Act won't go far enough, and mirrored with what's happening in the US where features and moderation have been rolled back where these companies are based. It does worry me.
"Machine learning and artificial intelligence might be able to detect signals and patterns of behaviour where it comes to hate speech."
Online verses real world
Despite the possibilities and the dangers of the online world and new technology, Alex says his main focus is what goes on inside the school gates.
"These are major issues since you spend 11,000 hours of your life at school. With that huge amount of time even if for just one of those you're made to feel uncomfortable, upset or unsafe, you do remember it for the rest of your life.
"Young people still tell us that the biggest amount of bullying they experience is in school. Which is a huge problem."