So, if you’re in Britain at the moment you can’t help but notice that Dr Tanya Byron’s review “Safer Children in a Digital World” was published late last week. For the past few days everyone from Ofcom, to the Home Office (who’ve clearly not heard of Hotmail et al), to the Daily Mail (only read if you’re interested in finding out what “TV Personality Anne Diamond” thinks about violent games), and many other members of the mainstream media (thank you The Telegraph for the mention of Moshi) have been having their say about the review.
Last night Dr Byron’s whistlestop tour of TV studios and select committee hearings was suspended for a night at BAFTA, at an event run by BAFTA and Showcomotion. She was in conversation with Marc Goodchild of the BBC and went through chapters of the review in a Q&A with the audience. I have to confess that before I’d read the report I only knew of Tanya Byron through her TV work, and didn’t know of her scientific or high-flying medical background, and like a fellow audience member had been concerned about the integrity of the report’s methods and findings. Mea culpa. What came out of last night and from looking at the report for the last few days, and looking at the research commissioned to go with it was a feeling of a very well structured, intellectual, research exercise and consultation. I’d have loved to have been involved in the consultation exercise but at the early stages of that process we were getting Moshi Monsters into private beta and also working on getting our COPPA approval/CARU safe harbor and there just wouldn’t have been time for both.
The review was the result of 100 stake holder meetings and many other activities, it “put children at the heart of the thinking” and sought to be balanced in what is a “polarized and emotional debate”. Fascinatingly there were more responses from children than there were from adults (including all industry consultation). For it’s thinking, the report delves into the fields of neuroscience, educational psychology and child development. The talk last night showed Dr Byron’s passion for her role and what a great job they’ve done, for once at these events I could have listened for a lot longer.
The review concentrates on harm as not just “content” but also contact and conduct. These are all things we’ve been thinking about as we’ve been building Moshi and have placed report buttons everywhere and put the children in charge of moderating their own messages and reporting issues.
The review places a lot of onus on the industry to educate parents about what their children are doing and places an equal if not greater responsibility on parents to discuss with their children what they are doing and to close the “digital divide”. A lot of emphasis is also placed on the fact that we are now “living in a risk averse culture and children are deprived of experiences which will help their development due to this obsession with risk”. One great analogy which is in the review and mentioned in the talk is that of swimming pools. Children need to learn to swim in a controlled environment to prepare them for the risk of drowning in later life in the real world.
“A useful analogy here would be to think about how we manage risks related to public swimming pools. Here we have an area open to the public because it affords many benefits. But swimming pools have a number of safety measures in place to in order to manage the risks (e.g. of injury, drowning):
There are clear safety information signs around the pool area that advise on appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.
There are swimming aids available for younger or the less confident swimmers (e.g. water wings, rubber rings, floats).
There are different pool areas – shallow for those that need to stand and are less confident at swimming all the way to deeper waters for confident swimmers and divers.
There are lifeguards who can assist swimmers (of all levels of competency) in trouble, signal to those who
are behaving in a risky manner, respond to complaints about swimmers’ behaviour, and even ask them to leave the pool if warnings are not heeded.
There are fences, doors, locks and alarms to prevent access to the pool area when it would be unsafe to go in.”
I feel it’s been a really positive report for the industry and overall a positive week in the arena kid’s online safety in the UK. I’m looking forward to seeing the next steps and how the proposed “UK Council on Child Internet Safety” works with the industry. It’s unheard of that the government accepts all the recommendations of a review such as this and it’s a big testament to Dr Byron and her team and process.
