Safer Children in a Digital World
[SUMMARY—My luke warm response.]
(GBR) The UK governments report into children's gaming and internet use was launched last week. I wanted to wait to hear/read the views of other people and media groups before offering my own here.
For those who don't know, the report positions itself as thus:
A comprehensive package of measures to help children and young people make the most of the internet and video games, while protecting them from harmful and inappropriate material.
For those who work with social media the recommendations are not surprising. Here's a flavour (check out the Executive Summary for more):
• The creation of a new UK Council for Child Internet Safety, established by and reporting to the Prime Minister, and including representation from across Government, industry, children's charities and other key stakeholders including children, young people and parent panels.
• Setting in place sustainable education and initiatives in children's services and education to improve the skills of children and their parents around e-safety.
• Challenging industry to take greater responsibility in supporting families through: 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.
• Reforming the classification system for rating video games with one set of symbols on the front of all boxes which are the same as those for film.
• Kick starting a comprehensive public information and awareness campaign on child internet safety across Government and industry, which includes an authoritative 'one stop shop' on child internet safety.
All things which makes sense and as already argued by Ewan McIntosh here stuff which allows educators to make a better case for educating parents on introducing new media and technologies into shools.
Focussing on the generational divide divide is a great start—illustrated by our calls for Education Not Legislation, our button theory and the fact 75% of all our training is with adults not young people—'how' this will work and the tone by which it is presented/delivered will be interesting to watch (how about enabling cross-generational educational programmes where young people 'teach' adults about social media like this project—a free idea for you guys).
For me there are three areas the report fails to tackle:
• children vs young people—very different demographics in terms of their internet/technology use and expectations. There is a danger of trying to develop strategies which cater for both groups here;
• internet or playing video games—surely these are two very different activities but in the report they are often 'lumped' together;
• social networking regulation—any plans to regulate these online spaces will be near impossible to enforce let alone coordinate (due to the amount of platforms plus their international approaches—check this out).
For me, this line from the executive summary gives me hope:
…we need to move from a discussion about the media 'causing' harm to one which focuses on children and young people, what they bring to technology and how we can use our understanding of how they develop to empower them to manage risks and make the digital world safer.
It's about creating a culture of understanding rather than a movement of curtailment.
MediaSnackers welcomes the report and debate but fears the mainstream media and organisations plus institutions will use it as leverage to curtail social media use by young people rather than explore its many opportunities.
NB: for future reports regarding the internet and social media please, please, please move away from text based reports and maybe take a note of how Ofcom realeased its latest report (check out how they have used video and interactive elements to present their findings).
Related post: Is The Internet Bad For Kids?
Filed by DK on April 5 2008
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