Children and Young People: Digital Technology

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, digital technology offers children a range of wonderful opportunities to have fun, create, learn, explore and socialise. However, not all progress takes us forward, because emerging evidence shows that digital technology can expose children to a vast range of online harms: inappropriate content, online gambling, body shaming, the production and distribution of child abuse imagery, and online grooming. The impacts can be devastating. Tech firms are failing our children and they will not take action until they are forced to.

Children make up one-third of global internet users and they see little distinction between their online and offline worlds. The NSPCC has developed an important set of regulatory proposals to keep our children safe in their digital playgrounds—and it should be listened to. When children consume things such as food, toys and clothes, those all meet standards that let us know they are safe. The online world should be the same. The age appropriate design code is an important step in building child-protection features into the online environment. Platforms should give children the highest privacy settings and make sure that geolocation is switched off by default. A statutory duty of care must be imposed on social networks by a social media regulator with the teeth and power to hold social networks to account and enforce this duty.

The spread of child sexual abuse images is getting worse and increasing in severity among the younger age group. Last year, the Internet Watch Foundation removed a record number of child abuse images from the internet. The IWF has a zero-tolerance approach and thanks to its work the UK has the fastest removal times of anywhere in the world.

The spectrum of online harms, other than child sexual abuse, is not so simple to legislate for, because harm is not recognised in law, or because it is technically difficult to enforce any law that is in place without compromising user privacy. But the Government need to consider the technical, legal and social implications and begin the serious debate about what the future of internet regulation might mean for citizens in the UK. Despite these issues rising up the agenda for concerned parents, many do not know how best to protect their children from harm online. It is up to policymakers to make effective legislation that considers the technical and social issues in dealing with a specific harm.

Play has been a big part of our lives, but a report by the Association of Play Industries—a movement for movement—reveals that today’s children have never moved so little and points to substantial evidence that screens are a key reason. By the age of eight, the average child will have spent one full year sitting in front of a screen. The report says:

“Unless the government takes steps to help parents reduce children’s discretionary screen time, current attempts to tackle childhood obesity and poor mental health are likely to fail”.


For years I have been saying, “Take the television, phones and computers out of the bedroom so children can get a good night’s sleep”. I know that teachers support this.

The All-Party Group on a Fit and Healthy Childhood, which I co-chair, produced a report looking at children’s mental health and the issues surrounding screen time. One of the contributors, Dr Aric Sigman, has written numerous medical papers and concludes that by the time children reach middle adolescence they spend more time using their screens than they do sleeping. That is increasingly linked with risks to their mental health and well-being.

So-called screen dependency disorder covers a wide range of harms, such as compulsive internet use, video game addiction, mobile phone dependency, social network site addiction and so on—all growing problems. One of our report’s recommendations was for policymakers to be vigilant in detecting and publicising conflicts of interest and to familiarise themselves with the influence of the technology companies in lobbying, funding research and influencing the way the media portrays discretionary screen time and screen dependency disorders. For example, recent media coverage of a report supposedly claiming that screen time is not harmful to children failed to make it clear that the report was about television viewing, which nowadays accounts for only about half of children’s screen time. The report did not cover social media, computer games, smartphones or computer use.

Childhood lasts a lifetime, so it is our duty to get it right. Yes, all interventions involving children should be evidence-based, but when it comes to the important issue of keeping children safe from abuse and harm online, we must double our efforts, because we have had 10 years of failed self-regulation. If we do not act now, we risk harming another generation of children, so I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for securing this crucial debate.