About five minutes after I posted that, I got an email from them (I’m a customer, so its probably because its in the news) with a link to their eBook about protecting your family online

eBook

So, I woke up this morning to find GMTV covering this story on children using social networking sites.

Now fortunately the BBC’s story comes across more balanced, but GMTV have always had a whiff of scare-mongering when it comes to their online stuff, especially social networking sites. Their story laid the blame for the whole thing squarely at the feet of the social networking sites (at least, that was how it seemed to me). No comment was passed on parental responsibility in these matters, which fortunately is mentioned in the BBC’s article.

At the end of the day, I do think there’s a tendancy in this country at the moment for parental responsibility to be shifted onto anyone other than the parents that can be blamed. Look at the recent scandals involving video games. Parents continually complaining about the lack of certification on games, when most of them do infact include a rating that they’ve voluntarily subscribed to, or (in the case of the more adult games like GTA or indeed, the infamous Manhunt) actually use the more familiar BBFC logos.

While I appreciate that technology moves along quickly, I do think parents have to accept their responsibility to try to keep up-to-date with these things. Manhunt’s a great example, because of all the parents saying “but we didn’t know it wasn’t appropriate!”. Its got scary cover, its clearly a violent game from its description (from Amazon’s product description: “Manhunt explores the depths of human depravity in a vicious, sadistic tale of urban horror”) and its got an 18 certificate logo on the front. What more do you need?

However with other things, such as social networking, I think there’s a clear need for eduction of parents. Listening to the horror stories on GMTV this morning of kids as young as 8, locked in their room sharing all their secrets on Facebook, I couldn’t help but think that parents need to be more aware of these sites, and how to change the privacy settings. Ok, their kids could then reset them, but (and I rant as someone with no experience of parenting here), surely if the parent is aware of these things, it’ll be easier for them to keep tabs on their child’s online safety? And is it really appropriate for young kids to have their own PC in their room anyway?

What about information leaflets regarding software for restricting what content children can look at online?

I guess the main point I’m trying to say, is *yes* as the article points out, sites such as Facebook can do things like setting privacy settings by default and the like (although I’m unsure how exactly they’d verify a childs age). But I think there’s still a lot of fearmongering going on with parents and the online world as a whole. And while parents need to step up and try to learn about these things, I do think there’s scope to make it easier for parents to have access to the education they need.

Of course, even if education, leaflets or whatever was readily available, you have to wonder how many of them would read it, versus running around blaming everyone else…