Internet cannot be sanitised for kids

27 Mar 2008 | 14:57 GMT

By Mark Ballard

WE CANNOT make a risk-free Internet in the same way that we cannot make a risk-free world, the British government's review of children, the internet and violent video games concluded today.

The extensive Review, Safer Children in a Digital World (L'inq), warned that over-protecting children can hinder their psychological development.

But TV psychologist Tanya Byron, who conducted the review, also warned that violent video games and adult internet content did present very real dangers to children, especially younger kids.

"We cannot make the internet completely safe, " she said in the report. " There is no obvious single point at which editorial control [of the internet] can be exercised. Just like in the offline world, no amount of effort to reduce potential risks to children will eliminate those risks completely."

She chastised Britain's 'risk averse culture' that has had parents mollycoddling children.

"Risk taking is a developmental imperative of childhood," she said. "Young people and children will always want to explore boundaries by taking risks."

The report highlighted a quote taken from the review's consultation with children. It said: Kids don’t need protection, we need guidance. If you protect us you are making us weaker. We don’t go through all the trial and error necessary to learn what we need to survive on our own don’t fight our battles for us just give us assistance when we need it.

Byron did nevertheless recommend a comprehensive list of things that government, parents, industry and schools could do to ensure that children's explorations of electronic media were conducted safely, that they were not prone to online predators and that their access to adult content and games was restricted.

She likened her recommended approach to teaching a child to cross the road, where early attempts were hand-held, later attempts were closely monitored, and children were only unsupervised when they had learned common sense rules such as looking both ways.

She also likened it to other areas such as swimming baths, where children were given the freedom to explore within safe boundaries. The point was that every kid was different and matured more quickly than others. "[In swimming baths there] are safety signs and information; shallow as well as deep ends; swimming aids and lifeguards; doors, locks and alarms," Byron said in a press statement.

"However, children will sometimes take risks and jump into waters too deep for them or want to climb walls and get through locked doors – therefore we also teach them how to swim," she said.

The same approach can be taken with the internet and video games, said Byron. Regarding the internet, she noted that most content was accessed on just a few popular sites. The internet could be made safer for children by removing potentially harmful adult content from these sites.

Parents and schools should use filtering software to restrict children's access to harmful content. While children themselves should be made more " resilient" to exposure to the adult world.

By taking this three-pronged approach, she said, "we can adequately manage the risks to children online".

The Byron Review recommended that the government establish a UK Council on Child Internet Safety, which would monitor the measures taken to protect kids online, and work with industry, educators, parents and child workers to implement them.

Industry should develop better parental control software, said Byron, while parents should make better use of it. It also recommended that e-safety be made part of the national curriculum, that teachers be tested on it, that all schools use internet filtering software, and that Ofsted, the schools standards body, monitor school's e-safety measures.

It also endorsed the existing system of classifying computer games with age-ratings, though recommended that it become a statutory obligation for games publishers to submit any game likely to be rated 12+ for official classification.

This is currently required only for 'adult' games, though all games are rated.

It also recommended the government establish a one-stop shop for child internet safety and that industry and government put more efforts into awareness campaigns. Content providers should adopt a voluntary code of practice to be more responsible. The government said it endorsed Byron's entire suite of recommendations.

L'Inqs
The Byron Review: Safer Children in a Digital World
European Commission’s Safer Internet Plus Programme
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre
Kidsmart

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