On 27th March the Department for Children, Schools and Families launched a report entitled “Safer Children in a Digital World” by Dr Tanya Byron, the well-known TV psychologist and mother of two. The report was commissioned by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in September 2007. It puts forward a range of measures to help children and young people benefit the internet and video games, while protecting them from dangerous and inappropriate material.
Dr Byron gives a detailed analysis of the evidence of the risks and benefits of new technologies and examines this evidence in the context of child and brain development theory and research to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the work which is already being carried out to protect children when surfing the internet or playing video games.
It concludes that while new technologies can bring incredible opportunities to children and young people, a general lack of confidence and awareness amongst parents is leaving children vulnerable to risks. Dr Byron compares unsupervised access to the Internet to opening the front door and letting your child go outside to play, unsupervised and highlights that online dangers can be enhanced by the anonymity and ubiquity of the Internet
Dr Byron makes a number of suggestions for improving improve children’s on-line safety including:
Establishing a new UK Council for Child Internet Safety, which will report to the he Prime Minister, and will include representatives from Government, industry, children’s charities, as well as children, young people and parents.
Asking industry to take greater responsibility by establishing transparent and independently monitored codes of practice on areas such as user generated content, improving access to parental control software and safe search features and better regulation of online advertising.
Launching a comprehensive public awareness campaign on child internet safety across Government and industry, including an authoritative ‘one stop shop’ offering information and advice on child internet safety.
Providing sustainable education and children’s service initiatives to improve the online safetyskills of children and their parents.
The report also recommends a number of high profile efforts to provide parents with information aboutwhat video games are suitable for their children. This includes:
Revising the classification system used for rating video games to use a single set of symbols which are the same as those for films.
Lowering the legal requirement to classify video games to 12+, so that it is the same as film classification and simpler for parents to understand.
Offering clear and consistent guidance for industry on how games should be advertised.
Challenging industry to provide sustained and high profile efforts to increase parents understanding of age ratings and improved parental controls.
Most of the proposals in the report would not be difficult to put into practice. Indeed, many of them have already been implemented, eg: parental control software, age rating for games and restrictions on illegal content.
It is interesting to note that many of the solutions proposed by Dr. Byron involve better education - particularly for parents. Byron notes that “One key finding from the review of the literature on the effects of new technologies on children is that the potential risks to children from using the internet are correlated with the potential benefits, for example, where the opportunity to find information is coupled with a risk of stumbling across adult material, or the benefits of being able to communicate and make new friends comes with a risk of potentially harmful contact from strangers or bullying.”
This suggests that attempts by education authorities and others to create “walled gardens”, where children can experience the benefits of the Internet without being exposed to any of the the risks are doomed to failure, as eliminating the risks can also destroy many of the benefits.
The proposals also include better promotion of parental control software, both from computer manufacturers and internet service providers. Although the use of such software is already widespread, the report suggests that it would be beneficial to introduce a kitemark system to let parents know what they are buying.