Researchers say too much attention paid to pornography and bullying when children also upset by violence and animal cruelty
Children
are as upset by violent videos on YouTube that feature animal cruelty
or beheadings and by insensitive Facebook messages from divorced
parents as they are by online bullying and pornography, according to the biggest survey of young British people and their internet use.
The research will be unveiled by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS)
on Tuesday – the 10th annual Safer Internet Day – when a charter of
rights and responsibilities for children online will also be launched.
The findings suggest that government policy, spearheaded by David
Cameron, to block sexual content and pornography through parental
controls and filters via internet service providers only goes part of
the way to securing the online safety of children.
The survey,
conducted for the council by academics, asked 24,000 children 25
questions about internet use, including "have you ever seen anything
online that has upset you?" Hundreds of schools around Britain were
enlisted to help canvass the children, who were aged up to 16.
Andy
Phippen, professor of social responsibility at Plymouth University, who
helped to devise the report, said: "Upset is caused by a broad range of
issues, very varied, and not all sexual content." One memorable answer
from a primary school child who was asked what most upset him was "when
my Dad told me on Facebook he didn't want to see me any more".
The report, Have Your Say,
is consistent with research Phippen was already carrying out. The
examples he heard included: a video of a zebra being killed, "someone
swearing at me", "a picture of my baby brother, who I don't live with
any more", and a picture of a cat that "looked like my pet that had to
be put down".
Phippen said: "There is no silver bullet to crack
child safety online. Government's obsession with filtering is OK, but
too narrow."
Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at
the London School of Economics, told the Oxford Media Convention last
month that LSE research, which asked 8,000 children aged nine to 16
about the disturbing things they had seen on the internet, supported
this picture. She added: "There is a lot of attention given to
pornography and bullying on social media, but they also mentioned
beheadings, flaying, cruelty to animals."
Professor Phippen
agreed: "Any channel used for communication is potentially a channel
for upsetting content, but certainly YouTube is the most prevalent as
far as video content is concerned."
Livingstone said that the
issue of online bullying was not covered by efforts to filter out
inappropriate content. "Filtering is only about content on established
websites", while filtering and blocking controls could be very clunky
to use and problematic.
However, Have Your Say also
finds many positive aspects to the internet. The survey shows that what
under-11s do most is play games on sites such as Moshi Monsters,
followed by schoolwork and keeping in touch with friends. For older
children, social networking takes over from playing games.
"I
think, in this age group, violent images and upset from abusive nasty
comments from their peers are the concerns. It is spoken about as so
and so is so mean to me. Cyber bullying – they don't use that term,"
said Phippen. Evidence from the children of being groomed or facing
predatory behaviour online is also scanty.
Accessing pornography
online, the main concern of parents responding to a government
consultation last autumn, did not feature highly in the teenagers'
responses. But there is a growing problem of "sexting" messages in
school, when pupils share personal sexual content via smartphones and
tablets. Phippen said one answer was better education. "You come back
to media literacy. About understanding how to conduct yourself online
and what the impact can be of behaviour, when you don't see the impact
of your behaviour, on the victim in front of you."
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