MUMSCAST
Are our Children Safe Online?
Following the incident involving a young girl in America and MySpace last week, we thought we would publish this comprehensive article on keeping children safe on-line again.
Towards the end of March, child psychologist, Tanya Byron delivered a 224 page report of her investigation into new dangers to children being brought up in the digital age. Her recommendations included a similar classification for video games as the one used for movies and a full ‘public education campaign’. She does warn however, that we need to empower our children to learn to assess and deal with the potential danger that they could be exposed to, particularly on the internet.
The government website, ‘Think you Know’, has a similar view. They say that, just as we have to teach our children life skills like how to cross the road safely, how to deal with strangers and how to engage with people in a range of situations, we also have to provide them with the skills to allow them to 'face the challenges of the modern world', including the virtual world of the internet.
As they say 'When our children go out to play we want to know where they are going. We satisfy ourselves that they know how to get there without any mishaps or being exposed to any real dangers en route, that they will be safe when they get there and that they will be with responsible people throughout. Typically, when our children come home we ask them if everything was OK. We take a very close interest. Using the internet safely requires similar skills, which is why it is important that parents and carers find out more about the /internet for themselves.'
Some of the internet risks Byron refers to in her report are: grooming, cyberbullying, the open-door policy to online "friends", paedophiles, porn and violence. She examines the scientific evidence about how children are affected by nasty computer games or hardcore porn. There were mixed results. For example, there is a correlation between aggression and playing violent computer games but it is not clear that there is a causal relationship i.e. that violent games make children more violent. In her personal view, though, she is more adamant: “I’m really clear that adult content is harmful and inappropriate for young children particularly,” she says. “They do not have the neural networks in place to be able to critically evaluate the content, to differentiate fantasy from reality.”
The government has agreed to adopt some of the measures she proposes in the report. Key recommendations include setting up a UK council on child internet safety to develop voluntary codes of practice for the industry and better information for the public; educating adults about "parental control” systems on computers; a new classification of computer games like those used for films; and courses in schools to teach children “e-safety”.
As we did not grow up with the Internet, providing our children with the skills to be safe online is not a ‘natural’ thing for us to do. We tend to teach our children the life skills that we were taught by our parents. But, the reality is that the world is a different place now and the way our children communicate is different. Just as we teach our children about the dangers of the 'real world' so, too, do we need to adapt and provide our children with a framework for safety in the virtual world. Similarly, just as you probably supervise your children’s television viewing and wouldn’t let them watch unsuitable programmes, so too should you keep an eye on what sites they visit on the Internet.
We can’t always watch our children when they are online, especially our teenagers, so we need to provide them with the tools to cope with any dangers and challenges they may find online.
WHERE DO YOU START?
Well, this list of Simple Ways to Keep Children Safe Online taken from the government's ThinkUKnow site is a good place:
1. Get to know your child’s online habits. Children are inquisitive. They will look to explore the internet as much as they do the real world. Knowing the sites they go to, the people they meet there and what they do will help to keep children safe.
2. Stay alert to any sudden changes in mood or appearance, or to any major change in habits or to increased secretiveness. These are often tell-tale signs that something is not right.
3. Keep lines of communication open - tell your child they can always talk to you or another trusted adult, such as a teacher, if they do end up in some sort of trouble on the internet. Make children aware that there are things on the internet which may distress them.
4. Spend some time surfing the internet yourself. The more that you know about the internet, the better able you are, in turn, to help your child navigate around it without coming to any harm.
5. Install internet filtering software showing a Child Safety Online Kitemark on your computer. Filtering products with a Kitemark have been independently tested to provide a simple and effective means of support to parents, helping to ensure that a child’s online experience is a safe one. The Kitemark scheme is sponsored by the Home Office and Ofcom.
6. Be aware of professional sources of help. These include:
6.1 Thinkuknow: the main UK Government website with advice for parents on how to keep children safe online
6.2 the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) is the Government body dedicated to eradicating abuse of children. Concerns about inappropriate contacts between a child and an adult, including online, can be reported directly to CEOP.
6.3 the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) works to remove illegal material from the internet. If you have found any material you believe to be illegal e.g. child sex abuse images, other obscene material or material which incites racial hatred, you can report it to the IWF.
6.4 A number of specialist websites contain general advice that may be of help to parents. These include www.nspcc.org.uk, www.nch.org.uk, www.barnardos.org.uk, and www.bullying.co.uk.
6.5 Other sites can offer parents support on broader issues. These include Parentiline Plus and ParentsOrg.
The BBC (their online family safety website is very good - see below for link) provides these tips:
1. Keep the computer in a family or shared room.
2. Talk to your children about Internet safety. Let them know that it's OK to tell you if they have a problem.
3. Ask your children to teach you how to chat, use message boards and instant messenger programmes.
4. Help your children set up their email accounts and 'spam' filters.
5. Limit the amount of unsupervised time your children spend online.
6. Encourage your children to be open about their Internet friends and the time they spend online.
If you would like to read more, the BBC Chat Guide is an excellent resource about how to keep you and your family safe online. It is broken down into useful categories: Children , Teens - which has a girls section and a 'lads section and include 'real life stories on internet safety, a section on bullying and identity fraud) and parents (keeping your children safe, 'Stranger danger' and also Letting go - allowing them to look after themselves)
Back Chat is also good for 11+ year olds - it's a game that highlights the fact that online friends can't always be trusted.
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