Online Safety Bill

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I want to focus on how people actually use the internet, particularly how young people actually use the internet. I feel, as was suggested in one of the comments in questions earlier, that this Bill and some of the discussion around it misses some of the point and some of the actual ways in which particularly young people use the internet.

We have not mentioned, or I have not heard anyone mention, Discord. I have not heard anyone mention Twitch. I have not heard people talking about how people interact on Fortnite. A significant number of young people use Fortnite to interact with their friends. That is the way they speak to their friends. I do not know if the Minister is aware of this, but you can only change the parental controls on Fortnite to stop your children speaking to everybody; you cannot stop them speaking to everybody but their friends. There are no parental controls on a lot of these sites that parents can adequately utilise. They only have this heavy-handed business where they can ban their child entirely from doing something, or they are allowed to do everything. I think some bits are missed in this because it does not actually reflect the way young people use the internet.

In the girls’ attitude survey produced by Girlguiding, 71% of the 2,000 girls who were surveyed said that they had experienced harmful content while online. But one of the important things I also want to stress is that a quarter of LGBQ and disabled girls found online forums and spaces an important source of support. So we need to make sure that children and young people have the ability to access those sources of support. Whether that is on forums, or on Fortnite, Minecraft, Animal Crossing or whatever it is they happen to be speaking to their friends on, that is important and key in order for young people to continue to communicate. It has been especially important during the pandemic.

There is at this moment a major parenting knowledge gap. There is a generation of parents who have not grown up using the internet. I was one the first people to grow up using the internet and have kids; they are at the top end of primary school now. Once this generation of kids are adults, they will know how their children are behaving online and what the online world is like because they will have lived through it themselves. The current generation of parents has not. The current generation of parents has this knowledge gap.

I am finding that a lot of my kids’ friends have rules that I consider totally—totally—unacceptable and inappropriate because they do not match how kids actually use the internet and the interactions they are likely to have on there. I asked my kids what they thought was the most important thing, and they said the ability to choose what they see and what they do not see, and who they hear from and who they do not hear from. That was the most important thing to them.

That has been talked about in a lot of the information we have received—the requirement to look at algorithms and to opt in to being served with those algorithms, rather than having an opt-out, as we do with Facebook. Facebook says, “Are you sure you don’t want to see this content any more?” Well, yes, I have clicked that I do not want to see it—of course I do not want to see it any more. Of course I would like to see the things my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) posts and all of the replies he sends to people—I want that to pop up with my notifications—but I should have to choose to do that.

Kids feel like that as well—my kids, and kids up and down the country—because, as has been talked about, once you get into these cycles of seeing inappropriate, harmful, damaging content, you are more likely to be served with more and more of that content. At the very first moment people should be able to say, “Hang on, I don’t want to see any of this”, and when they sign up to a site they should immediately be able to say, “No, I don’t want to see any of this. All I want to do is speak to the people I know or have sent a friend request to and accepted a send request from.” We need to ensure that there are enough safeguards like that in place for children and young people and their parents to be able to make those choices in the knowledge and understanding of how these services will actually be used, rather than MPs who do not necessarily use these services making these decisions. We need to have that flexibility.

My final point is that the internet is moving and changing. Twenty years ago I was going to LAN parties and meeting people I knew from online games. That is still happening today and we are only now getting the legislation here and catching up. It has taken that long for us to get here so this legislation must be fit for the future. It must be flexible enough to work with the new technologies, social media and gaming platforms that are coming through.