Nasty shock this morning. I am sitting in the Living room, catching up on email and watching the news and guess who pops up on the BBC breakfast news but Euan Semple, dressed from head to foot in matt black. He was described as an Internet Security Advisor and was speaking with Annie Mullins who is a Home Office Advisor. Love the new title Euan!
The discussion related to regulation of the internet in respect of child pornography on social computing sites. Euan made the critical point that parents have to be engaged and aware with how social computing in order to have conversations with their children. I agree, the best regulation is always self-regulation and attempts to remove parental responsibility through government regulation in this regard will not work. If you are engaged then you can pick up on the weak signals in conversation with your children that might indicate a problem.
Comments (3)
Yeah they got both our descriptions wrong. So much for editorial standards!
Posted by euan | April 4, 2008 9:10 AM
Posted on April 4, 2008 09:10
morning dave,
the research is showing that the "online predator" meme is mostly that, a story perpetuated by the telling.
here's a link to my blog , which has the article attached.
in a nutshell, predation occurs, but it's occurance is dependent on the willingness of the victim to engage with the predator. if you drop the willingness of youth to speak openly with strangers, predation will drop.
as you say, parental responsibility, and good guidence, will prevent predation.
Posted by che tibby | April 5, 2008 9:09 PM
Posted on April 5, 2008 21:09
Che tibby,
When you look at it that way, "Don't speak to strangers" is something that kids have been taught at school for years (along with Jimmy the Germ), so I guess, at foundation, the environment is irrelevant.
Perhaps online "stranger danger" isn't quite so clear because the predator has an avatar of a Polly Pocket character but still – the message is the same.
Posted by Alex Manchester | April 7, 2008 11:54 PM
Posted on April 7, 2008 23:54