Byron Report

The Byron Report was published yesterday and I spent some of last night reading through it. Generally it is a well balanced report. We will have to see how some of the recommendations are applied in Scotland. You can read it here. This quotation from Dr Tanya Byron perhaps sums up the tone of the whole report

“Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe - this isn’t just about a top-down approach. Children will be children - pushing boundaries and taking risks. At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.”

She states the obvious fact that the pace of the online revolution has left parents as “the internet immigrants” and children as “the internet natives”, often causing worries for parents struggling to stay in touch with technology. She said yesterday: “Ironically parents’ concerns about risk and safety of their children in the streets and outside has driven a generation of children indoors, where it could be argued they are being exposed to a whole new set of risks.”

“The debate about the internet had, however, been hampered by excessive anxiety and the issue now placed great challenges before government to do more to protect and educate.”

Her research has shown that parents are most worried by predators and children are most concerned by cyberbullying. She argues that that academic research on the impact of the net on children and their lifestyles is inadequate.

Meanwhile there is an interesting debate going on about the report over at the Guardian digital content blog