The Byron Review on World wide web Safety
On 27th March the Department for Kids, Schools and Families launched a report entitled “Safer Children in a Digital World” by Dr Tanya Byron, the well-known TV psychologist and mom 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 perilous and inappropriate material.
The report gives a detailed analysis of the evidence of the risks and benefits of new technologies and examines this evidence alongside child and brain development theory and research to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the work already being done to protect kids when on the web or playing video games.
It concludes that while new technologies can bring breathtaking 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 World wide web to opening the front door and letting your child go outside to play, unsupervised and highlights that on the internet dangers can be enhanced by the anonymity and ubiquity of the World wide web
In order to improve children’s on-line safety, Dr Byron makes a number of suggestions 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 kids, young people and parents.
Requiring industry to take greater responsibility by establishing independently monitored codes of practice in areas such as user generated content, improving access to parental control software and safe search features and increased control over on the web advertising.
Initiating a comprehensive public awareness campaign on child internet safety across Government and industry, including an authoritative ‘one stop shop’ on child world wide web safety.
Establishing sustainable education and children’s service initiatives to improve the skills of children and their parents in the area of online safety.
The report also suggests a number of high profile efforts to provide parents with information aboutwhat video games are suitable for their children. This includes:
Updating the classification system for rating video games to use a single set of symbols which are the same as those for movies.
Lowering the legal stipulation to classify video games to 12+, so that it is the same as film classification and simpler for parents to comprehend.
Offering clear and consistent guidance for industry on how games should be advertised.
Asking industry to provide sustained and high profile efforts to increase parents knowledge of age ratings and improved parental controls.
Few of the proposals in the report would be difficult to put into practice. Some of them have already been implemented, eg: parental control software, age ratings for video games and restrictions on illegal content.
It is interesting to note that many of the solutions proposed by Dr. Byron involve superior 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.”
It may be that efforts by education authorities and others to create “walled gardens”, where kids can benefit from the World wide web without being exposed to the risks are misguided, as removing the risks can also eliminate many of the benefits.
The proposals also include superior promotion of parental control software, both from personal manufacturers and internet service providers. Even though 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’re buying.