My Lords, I speak in this Second Reading debate with little detailed knowledge of the digital world. I will probably be taking up my noble friend Lord Allan’s offer. I am not on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or Snapchat; I have occasionally dabbled on Twitter. What I do have is 40-plus years’ experience as a teacher and head teacher. I have seen first-hand how children can have their lives turned upside down and how they have been physically and emotionally scarred by the effects of social media and the online world.
Yesterday, we heard from a study by the Children’s Commissioner for England how children as young as nine are being exposed to online pornography; how a quarter of 16 to 21 year-olds saw pornography while still at primary school; and how, by the age of 13, 50% had been exposed to it. You might say, “So what?” Do we want to hear that 79% of 18 to 21 year-olds have seen pornography involving sexual violence while they were still children? Do we want to hear that a 12 year- old boy had strangled a girl during a kiss because he thought that was normal? Do we want to hear that half of young people say girls expect sex to involve physical aggression? This all comes, by the way, from the Children’s Commissioner’s report.
The Online Safety Bill, as we have heard, has been a long time coming. The Government’s aim in introducing the Bill is to make Britain the best place in the world to set up and run a digital business, while simultaneously ensuring that Britain is the safest place in the world to be online. But does the Bill really achieve that for children? Childhood is about loving and learning. It is about innocence and enjoying the wonders of life. It is not about having that innocence and wonder shattered by some perverse online content.
My interest in this Bill is how we as a society can restore childhood to our children. The Bill, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, must cite the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and General Comment 25 on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment. Citing this in the Bill would mean that regulated services would have regard to children’s existing rights. The limited scope of the Bill means that, as the 5Rights Foundation points out, children will still be exposed to harmful systems and processes, including blogs and websites that promote and encourage disordered eating, online games which promote violence, financial harms such as gambling, and parts of the metaverse which have yet to be developed. The Bill will not be future-proofed. Regulating only certain services means that online environments and services which
are not yet built or developed are likely not to be subject to safety duties, which will quickly make the Bill out of date.
Turning to age verification, as a teacher it always worries me that children as young as seven or eight are on Facebook. In fact, 60% of UK children aged eight to 12 have a profile on at least one social media service. Almost half of children aged eight to 15 with a social media profile have a user age of 16 plus, and 32% of children aged eight to 17 have a user age of 18. Without age assurance, children cannot be given the protections needed to have an age-appropriate experience online. Some 90% of parents think that social media platforms should enforce minimum age requirements. We should do whatever we can to protect children from harm. The Bill will establish different types of content which could be harmful to children:
“primary priority content that is harmful to children … ‘priority content that is harmful to children’ and ‘content that is harmful to children’”.
I say that any content that is harmful to children should be dealt with.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, has said, media literacy is hugely important to this Bill and should be included. Media literacy allows children to question the intent of media and protect themselves from negative impacts, be it fake news, media bias, mental health concerns or internet and media access. Media literacy helps children and young people safely consume the digital world. I was a bit disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, did not ask what a Liberal Government would do, but I can tell him that we would be dealing with this issue.
Yesterday, the Princess of Wales launched a campaign to highlight the importance of childhood. Children need to enjoy their childhood and grow up in a supportive, caring environment. They need good role models, not influencers. Children are very vulnerable, innocent and susceptible. We must do all in our power to ensure that online is a safe place for them, and to be able to say to the daughter of the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, that we did finally do something about it.
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