The Children’s Commissioner for England has called
for more to be done to help educate children in online safety in a new study
titled Growing Up Digital.
Anne Longfield said that it is “wholly
irresponsible” for youngsters to spend time in a digital world, without
appropriate education.
The year-long study found that across a number of
online activities, children are effectively out of their depth.
Consider social media as an example – when
accessing these services, young people are often unaware of what they have
signed up to.
This includes “impenetrable” terms and conditions
that impact on their privacy, as well as ownership of the content they produce
on these social channels.
Longfield has now called for a digital ombudsman to
be created, to ensure that children growing up in the digital world have a
representative at the highest level.
“I urge the government to extend the powers of the
Children’s Commissioner so that there is independent oversight of the number
and type of complaints that social media providers are receiving from young
people,” she added.
“When the internet was created 25 years ago, the
internet was not designed with children in mind. We need to rethink the way we
prepare children for the digital world”.
Growing Up Digital has advised that every school in
England should be made to deliver “digital citizenship” study programs.
The paper also recommends that social media
companies rephrase their terms and conditions in order for children to fully
understand them and thus be able to make appropriate decisions online.
Baroness Beeban Kidron, a member of the Growing Up
Digital steering group, observed that there was currently “a yawning gap in
[children’s] digital education and an unsustainable situation where the long
established rights of children are not applied online”.