This is a guest article from Mark Bentley of the LGfL. As I wrote in my article about the Online Harms Bill, I haven’t had time to check what the latest version is like, and how it differs from the original, so when I was offered this article I was quite pleased.

Mark Bentley is the Safeguarding and Cybersecurity Manager at edtech charity LGfL-The National Grid for Learning. He is passionate about keeping children safe and schools secure. Here Mark shares his views on the Government’s Online Safety Bill.

In 2018, ahead of the Government’s white paper on internet harms, the NSPCC developed a regulatory proposal called Taming the Wild West Web, to protect children from the risks they face on social networks, including the risk of grooming and sexual abuse. In November that year it also held a roundtable to discuss the proposal with experts and representatives from social networks and the technology, regulatory and children’s sector.

Four years on, I’m pleased to report that the Government has now published its Online Safety Bill, which once debated, approved by each House of Parliament, and in receipt of Royal Assent, will become law. The new bill is certainly a step in the right direction, but what still needs to be addressed?

Typically in the education world we focus on Department for Education and Ofsted announcements, but over the past few months, the number of DCMS (Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport) press releases with relevance to keeping children safe online have been more and more regular and it is worth schools keeping an eye on how new legislation will affect protection on the internet and how we support the children and young people in our care.

So what will the new legislation address? The overall aim of the bill is to make things illegal online if they are illegal offline, and to give the same protections to children and other vulnerable users in the offline space that you would expect online. But what is missing?

One of the most important things that would transform children and young people’s experiences online is if they were not able to access apps, sites and games that are supposed to be for over 13s or over 18s. Pornography is the classic example here, and that is something that after several changes will be covered by the bill for commercial providers and social media where lots of this content ends up.

Several studies have shown the scale with which online porn is being seen by children and the harm which is being done. Much of this is extreme and exhibiting harmful sexual behaviours that are being ‘taught’ to our young people by the internet.

I’m delighted to report however that age verification will now be required, and not just the classic “enter your date of birth” or “grab your parents’ credit cards” but true user identification. There are some privacy concerns about this from some parties, but the last few years have seen some great BSI standards on how to do this without sharing your identity with tech companies, and many new providers of the required technology.

Moving forward, the next steps are expected to be for this same kind of approach to be taken for the use of social media in general, which may lead to more age-appropriate and child-friendly apps thriving if they no longer need to compete with large platforms which claim to be for older users but which are full of children. That may help schools with messaging around only using age-appropriate sites for students and parents, as we know how easy it is for these to be undermined.

One important element that is still to be covered explicitly by the bill is parental control. The new independent regulator will be Ofcom, and hopefully the codes of conduct they lay out will cover these issues and help ensure more effective controls. I would like to see more here, however, to turn on child settings by default and make them easier to use.

It’s crucial that schools support families, by pointing them to the controls already in place – a little bit of effort before giving children new devices or allowing them onto new apps and games definitely pays off in the long run, so schools need to make sure that they regularly remind parents of the settings and other measures they can take. We have lots of examples and a family agreement along with tips for how to talk to children about online harms at parentsafe.lgfl.net.

Keep an eye on the news as there are some great opportunities for class discussion and debate which may reveal a lot to you about what we need to keep children safe from. The bill will never be perfect and the proof of the pudding, as ever, remains in the eating, or rather its implementation and enforcement by Ofcom. But anything that helps keep children safe should be welcomed and it is great to see us moving in the right direction to create a safer internet.

One more thing…

On the subject of online safety, you might like to check out the LGfL’s resource called Going Too Far? It won an award at the recent Bett show. From the press release: