New Council set to protect childrens interests online
29th September 2008
The Labour Government continues to highlight the need for more safety for children while they use the internet. Therefore, a new ‘UK Council for Child Internet Safety’ is being set up by the DCSF (Ed Balls) and Home Office (Jacqui Smith) to combat cyber-bullying, inappropriate websites and check online marketing/advertising.
The newly created Council is a result of Dr Tanya Byron’s report commissioned through the Government, “Safer Children in a Digital World”, in which she looked into how the internet and video games can be unsafe for children due to harmful content and inappropriate contact with other people. It highlighted the fact many parents do not know what their children are doing online, and many case stories in which children had come across pornography and violent images at young ages.
The Prime Minister will oversee the Council, which boasts over 100 organisations – many of whom are big players in the online industry, such as front runners Google and Microsoft, leading social network Facebook and mobile phone companies like O2, which all have a large part to play in making the internet a safer place for children.
It is difficult to envisage how the Council will measure its progress i.e. how it will show the improvements in child internet safety since it was created. However, it is certainly a step in the right direction because the more bodies involved in observing internet content the safer the world wide web will become. However, if regulation becomes too restrictive the essence of the internet could be lost.
While we’re on the subject of New Council set to protect childrens interests online – Blog – Digital Birmingham, no mother or father would deliberately buy a dangerous product for their child. Nevertheless, particular kinds of products are much more likely to contain dangerous materials than others, so it pays to know what to steer clear of.