With children increasingly watching internet websites displaying pornography and extreme violence – there are more than 450 of them in the UK earning some £3 billion a year – it is for the industry to regulate itself.
They should appoint a single regulator and ensure that network filter systems are introduced and provide internet safety education – with the government pressing them to take urgent action.
That is the outcome of the final 88-page report of the independent cross-party Parliamentary inquiry by 16 MPs staged last autumn with Marlborough’s Tory MP Claire Perry in the chair.
But many hard-pressed parents are likely to find the report’s recommendations too soft without any suggestion of legislation that punishes those who promote — and profit from — pornography and abuse.
“Our inquiry found that many children are easily accessing internet pornography as well as other websites showing extreme violence or promoting self-harm and anorexia,” Mrs Perry told Marlborough News Online.
“This is hugely worrying. While parents should be responsible for their children’s online safety, in practice people find it difficult to put content filers on the plethora of internet-enabled devices in their homes, plus families lack the right information and education on internet safety.”
And Mrs Perry, who has three children, added: “It’s time that Britain’s internet service providers, who make more than £3 billion a year from selling internet access services, took on more of the responsibility to keep children safe.”
“And the government needs to send a strong message that this is what we all expect.”
The report reveals that a 2008 YouGov survey found that 27 percent of boys were accessing pornography every week with five per cent viewing it every day.
Another study showed that a quarter of young people had received unsolicited pornographic junk mail or instant messages, while almost one in eight had visited pornographic websites showing violent images.
A YouGov survey in February last year found that 83 per cent of people felt that easy access to pornography on the internet was damaging to children aged under eight.
“Mumsnet also reported concerns around two specific areas – young children stumbling across material in response to innocent search terms, and older children, especially teenage boys, seeking out more hard-core or violent material,” the report adds.
And it points out that despite the lack of clear regulatory guidance, British internet service providers (ISPs) led the world in self-regulation they acted collectively in 1996 to restrict consumer access to child abuse imagery by creating the Internet Watch Foundation.
But evidence given to the inquiry argued that a self-regulation regime among ISPs that led to the creation of an Opt-In filtering system would be better than having a solution imposed by government.
“More draconian regulation could act as a drag on internet growth which is very important to Britain,” the report concluded. “The UK’s internet economy made up 8.3 per cent of GDP in 2010 and enjoys a growth rate that is almost double that of many global competitors such as the USA, Germany, France and China.”
