Brown launches watchdog to protect children online

Gordon Brown has launched an internet watchdog to protect children from harmful online content such as violent video games and cyber bullying.

The Prime Minister said that the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, which aims to teach children about dangers on the web, target harmful internet content and establish a code of conduct for websites enabling user uploads, was a landmark in online child protection.

Speaking at the Science Museum in London last week, Brown said the internet offered children “a world of entertainment, opportunity and knowledge”. However, it was important to strike a balance between safety and internet freedoms.

“Just as we would not allow [children] to go out unsupervised in playgrounds or in youth clubs or in swimming pools, so we must put in place the measures we need to keep our children safe online,” he said.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, also at the launch, said: “We are determined to do all we can to ensure that the internet environment is safe for children to use.”

The council will be made up of representatives from over 100 organisations including social networking sites such as Facebook, technology firms such as Microsoft and Google, and mobile phone companies such as O2, Orange, T-Mobile and 3. They will come together to form a strategy that aims to establish a public awareness campaign, promote responsible advertising to children online, draw up voluntary codes of practice for websites and establish measures to protect children on the net, such as dismantling illegal sites.

The council’s launch comes after a recent report which found that parents are failing to properly monitor the time that their children spend on the internet.

According to the report, 84% of parents do not supervise their children’s broadband use, relying on a simple promise from their children regarding which sites they do and do not visit. Not only can this lack of monitoring lead to parents paying unexpected sums of money – for example if children order goods online or exceed the download limit set by their ISP – it can also pose a danger for the children. There have been many cases in recent months of adults posing as children in internet chat rooms.

A recent survey investigating how children aged between 11 and 16 spend their time online found that 48% used the internet to download music, 45% used chat rooms and 40% spent time on social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo.

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