UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Digital Impact

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a timely and important debate. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Kidron, for securing it and for introducing it in such a penetrating and thoughtful way. I would also like to compliment the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, on a fascinating maiden speech. I welcome her to the House.

I speak with an acute awareness of the limits of my own personal exposure to some of the issues raised in the debate so far. Indeed, it has been rather reassuring to know that I am not alone in the House in my lack of personal knowledge of online gaming and the appeal of Minecraft and Xbox Live. I do not use social media platforms such as Instagram or Snapchat. I do not have a Facebook presence. I say this with no pride; I realise that it is a form of generational isolation. Anyone who spends any time with children or teenagers today knows how important social media are to their lives. They are how they communicate with each other. They seem to be the filter through which they experience almost everything.

Of course these technologies can have many powerful and positive benefits, educationally and socially but, as the Children’s Commissioner for England, Maggie Atkinson, has said, for young people to be at ease in the virtual environment does not mean they are immune from its ill effects. I have been horrified by the statistics and data that I have seen about those ill effects, many of which have been mentioned in this debate. I have talked to parents of young children and heard how anxious they are. I know of teachers who have shocking stories about what children and young teenagers can be exposed to and the damage that this does.

It is absolutely right that we take this opportunity to look to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to help us view issues around children and young people’s use of the internet in terms of rights. Article 16 of the UNCRC encompasses their right to privacy. Given that so much of young people’s lives is now spent in an online environment, teaching them to stay safe and to both value and protect their privacy and dignity is of vital importance. Similarly, Article 19 talks about the promise of adults to ensure children’s protection from abuse in all its forms.

As I indicated, I am not equipped to wade into technical waters, but I will just dip in a toe to welcome an undertaking by the four big internet service providers—BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media—that by the end of this year they will introduce solutions for home filtering that prompt parents, as account holders, with an unavoidable choice to apply a filter. I know that filters can be bypassed but they are still one important way of protecting children from harmful content. But other ISPs are still dragging their feet so I hope that the Minister can tell us what the Government are doing to encourage other ISPs to commit to ensuring that access to online child abuse images is prevented and deterred, and what steps the Government will take if ISPs do not deliver on this commitment.

The scope of this debate is vast and I am going to focus my remaining remarks today on social networking and one huge area of parental concern—one raised by several other noble Lords—which is cyberbullying. Sadly, there has always been bullying in schools but before social media much of it may have stopped at the school gate. Now it can follow a child home. It can take the form of abusive text messages, sexting or explicit mobile phone messaging, and sending menacing or upsetting messages over social networks, known as “trolling”.

It is a serious concern. More than 1,700 cases were heard in 2012 in English and Welsh courts involving abusive messages, sent online or via text message. The NSPCC says that 4,500 children contacted ChildLine last year regarding online bullying. Of 12 to 15 year-olds, Ofcom reports that almost one in 10 say they have experienced bullying in the past year, and close to half know someone with experience of online or mobile phone bullying, gossip being spread or embarrassing photos being shared. The NSPCC says that one in five think being bullied online is part of life.

I was shocked at that, but that statistic was no surprise to one London secondary school teacher I know of, who says all her students use the website Ask.fm. Users have to register but they can do so anonymously. You can pose any question at all on this site and people will respond. It is good for chatting about homework; it might even be genuinely informative. But then someone will ask, “What do you think about so and so?” The responses can be horrible—comments on that person’s sexual experience, appearance, weight and so on. There is no accountability as the comments are all anonymous.

Teenagers are acutely self-conscious, and of course these sorts of remarks can also be made off-line—in what I like to call real life—but online spaces such as Ask.fm can make matters so much worse. Other youngsters hear about the exchanges, they take screen shots and text those to the victim or their friends. This teacher says that when it happens to girls their confidence is ripped to shreds. Building up their self-esteem, raising their aspirations, encouraging them to think beyond their social media friendships is a huge task.

We get media headlines when this sort of bullying ends, tragically, in suicide, but cyberbullying is not a specific criminal offence in the UK. The relevant laws were introduced many years before Twitter, Facebook and Ask.fm. The Communications Act 2003 was drafted with no mention of the internet. The Online Safety report issued earlier this year by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee called for greater clarity in legislation around child abuse images. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government will review current legislation and make cyberbullying a criminal offence so that young people have the protection they need?

While legislation is part of the solution, it is clear that educating children about online safety is key to tackling cyberbullying, so I welcome the extension of e-safety teaching to primary school pupils aged between five and 10 from this September. It will take a combined effort to tackle this terrible problem, so having e-safety on the school curriculum, along with better advice to parents and carers on how to report harmful material, is vital. Websites such as Thinkuknow, the advice offered by Childnet, and the hotline provided by the Safer Internet Centre along with its initiatives such as Safer Internet Day, are all making a difference. So is CEOP, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, The teachers I have spoken to have nothing but praise for its work and for its website and online information for schools and parents, but it is a drop in the ocean. I hope the Minister will give the House an assurance that bringing CEOP within the National Crime Agency will indeed enhance its resources. I am thinking of the concerns I have heard over whether, within the NCA, the centre’s education and social care work will continue alongside its criminal justice remit. I would welcome his views.

Schools cannot be left to work on this in isolation. Parents need to be educated about how best to familiarise themselves with the social media that are so central to their children’s lives. Information about how to deal with upsetting information needs to be displayed prominently by social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Everyone involved with children’s and young people’s use of the internet, whether parents, schools, organisations or ISPs, shares a responsibility for online safety. But alongside teaching techniques for staying safe, we must also attempt to shape attitudes. The UN convention gives us another opportunity to make that commitment and ensure that, in our ever-changing digital world, we stay a few clicks ahead.