Several pieces of legislation across the world are coming into effect this year to tackle harms experienced online, such as the UK’s Online Safety Act and Australia’s Online Safety Act. There are also new standards, regulations, acts and laws related to digital products (including smart devices such as voice assistants, virtual headsets) and services such as social media platforms.

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

Unfortunately, when psychological harm and the like are referred to, there is typically no detailed corresponding definition of them. But while we might have an intuitive understanding of what psychological harm is, we still need precision on what it means in law. This means evidencing what it is, agreeing on how to measure it and designing the best methods to tackle it.

How do we do this? An obvious place to look is psychological science.

The earliest reference to psychological harm was made in the 1940s. 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 was a broad term, which also applied to those witnessing........

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