The Department for Children, Schools and Families today launched a report entitled "Safer Children in a Digital World" by Dr Tanya Byron, a clinical psychologist and mother of two. The report, which was commissioned by the Prime Minister in September 2007, proposes a package of measures to help children and young people make the most of the internet and video games, while protecting them from harmful and inappropriate material.

The report analyzes of the evidence of the risks and benefits of new technologies and examines this evidence with reference to child and brain development theory and research to produce a comprehensive evaluation of the work currently being done to protect children when online or playing computer games.

Dr Byron comes to the conclusion that that while new technologies can bring incredible opportunities to children and young people, a lack of confidence and awareness amongst parents is leaving children vulnerable to risks. She compares unsupervised access to the Internet to opening the front door and letting your child go outside to play unsupervised and highlights online dangers can be increases by the anonymity and ubiquitousness of the Internet

In order to improve children's on-line safety, Dr Byron makes a number of recommendations including:

Creating a new UK Council for Child Internet Safety, which will report to the Prime Minister, and including representation from Government, children's charities, and industry, in addition to children,teenagers and parents.

Requiring industry to take greater responsibility by establishing independently monitored codes of practice in areas such as user generated content, improving access to parental control software and safe search features and increased control over online advertising.

Launching a comprehensive public awareness campaign on child internet safety across Government and industry, including an authoritative 'one stop shop' offering information and advice on child internet safety.

Establishing sustainable education and children's service initiatives to improve the skills of children and their parents in the area of online safety.

Dr Byron also recommends a range of high profile efforts to educate parents about the suitability of video games are right for their children. This includes:

Updating the classification system for rating video games to use a single set of symbols which are the same as those for movies.

Lowering the legal requirement to classify video games to 12+, so that it is the same as film classification and simpler for parents to understand.

Offering clear and consistent guidance for industry on how games should be advertised.

Requiring industry to provide sustained and high profile efforts to improve parents understanding of age rating systems and improved parental controls.

Few of the proposals in the report would be difficult to put into practice. Many of them are already being implemented, eg: parental control software, age ratings for games and restrictions on illegal content.

It is interesting to note that many of the suggested solutions are based on better education - particularly for parents. Byron notes that "One key finding from the review of the literature on the effects of new technologies on children is that the potential risks to children from using the internet are correlated with the potential benefits, for example, where the opportunity to find information is coupled with a risk of stumbling across adult material, or the benefits of being able to communicate and make new friends comes with a risk of potentially harmful contact from strangers or bullying."

This suggests that attempts by education authorities and others to create "walled gardens", where children can experience the benefits of the Internet without being exposed to the risks are misguided, as eliminating the risks can also eliminate many of the benefits.

Dr Byron's proposals also include better marketing of parental control software, both from computer manufacturers and internet service providers. The use of such software is already commonplace, but the report suggests that it would be useful to introduce a kitemark system to give parents additional information about what they are buying.

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Ted Hastings has more than 35 years experience in IT and education. He has written a textbook on Internet Safety Skills and writes a regular blog entitled Surf Safely.

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