Whose job is it to protect our children from online harm? That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Is it the tech companies? Schools? The Government? Parents and carers? The correct answer of course, is all of the above, so why aren’t we doing it?
The Online Safety Bill is a groundbreaking piece of legislation designed to protect children, but we face a potential lag of 18 months until the benefits of it will be felt.
As a mother I warmly welcome the Government taking action to ban mobile phones in school, including break-times. School should be a sanctuary where children can both learn and play. But as children only spend 20% of their waking hours at school we must go further.
So in this morning’s Education Select Committee, (subject, screen time: impacts on education and well-being), I posed the question - what can we do during the next 18 months to ensure that hundreds of thousands (possibly more) young people are not permanently harmed, or even killed, due to having unfettered access to the internet and all its potential horrors?
All of the witnesses who included Jessica Edwards, Senior Policy Advisor on Childhood Harms at Barnardo’s, David Wright, Director of The UK Safer Internet Centre and Ian Critchley, Lead of Child Protection for the National Police Chiefs’ Council warned that the harm being done to children right now is too great to wait 18 months for tech companies to step up. The danger is right now.
Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, quite rightly reiterated her calls for a comprehensive range of measures around age verification, safety by design, safety in schools and parental education, all preferably funded by tech companies. She also warned about the growing dangers of harmful AI and the metaverse.
But surely we could do something much simpler? Back in 2016 when I had teenagers at home, I co-founded a campaign with another concerned mother called the ‘7-7-7 Digital Sunset Challenge’. Using a short, highly impactful film that we made ourselves, we went into primary schools and challenged whole year groups to switch off their devices for one week, starting at 7pm and ending at 7am. It worked because it was simple, free and if all their friends were offline, they felt they could be too.
With yet another tragic loss in the form of teenager, Brianna Ghey, today, nobody is disputing social media’s role in the massive increase of mental and physical health problems children are suffering. The touch of a button reveals violence inducing videos of hard-core pornography, child abuse, and sites which freely promote anorexia, self-harm, extreme breathing challenges and even suicide.
One such victim was my constituent, 12 year old Archie Battersbee, who was found unconscious at home after watching hours of videos on his phone. He died a few months later. Archie’s mother, Hollie Dance, believes that Archie was most probably taking part in an online 'blackout' challenge or dare that went wrong.
Before Archie’s death, Hollie says she had ‘no idea’ that there was so much ‘sinister’ content out there. She describes herself as a ‘very protective’ parent who drove Archie everywhere rather than let him walk the streets, but, Hollie says that via his smartphone, she ‘inadvertently let a million strangers into her home’ to spend hours of unsupervised time with her child.
Despite her personal loss, Hollie doesn’t agree that phones should be banned outright for youngsters. ‘It’s a dangerous world out there’, she says, ‘they need phones in case something happens on the commute to and from school’. She does, however, think that a total ban during school time is a good thing, and she is now spear-heading a campaign for better parental education regarding social media before children leave primary school.
Many schools which already ban phones will welcome the Government’s crackdown. Eastwood High Academy Trust, a secondary school in my constituency, which has a strict no-phones policy, has seen a significant uptick in good behavior and a decrease in bullying and other unpleasant actions both in the classroom and corridors.
In a refreshing display of ‘adultness’ CEO Scott Sterling, told me that he was less concerned about whether the children liked the ban or not and more interested in the many positives that it brought to pupils and teachers alike. Have we, perhaps, forgotten that sometimes children may not initially like adult-imposed boundaries such as a phone ban, but they absolutely benefit from them and one day will be glad that someone, somewhere was in charge?
The next Education Select Committee session into screen time is in mid-March when we will hear from the schools minister Nick Gibb. I will be reiterating my call that every day that something is not being done, more children are coming to harm.
