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Think of the Children



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The real threat to internet users is censorship, not social networking. Amid the flurry of election speculation that marked the opening of parliament, another trend could have passed unnoticed. And indeed, if Gordon Brown had not announced that the television psychologist Tanya Byron was to lead his investigation into the effects of computer technology on children, it may well have done. But it is not just the photogenic Byron who will be thinking of the children over the coming months.

In the summer, the chair of the House of Commons select committee on culture, media and sport announced his intention to investigate what damage social networking sites could be having on Britain's young people.

Consenting adults have good grounds to hope that both these reviews will be sensible affairs that advocate education for parents about the risks of the web and offer reviews of software they can instal to make sure kids steer clear of adult content. Elsewhere in the body politic, however, a rather different attitude towards online content is emerging. Next month, the European Commission will propose a raft of anti-terror measures, including the development of technologies that can deny access to websites judged to aid or incite terrorism. Back at home, the Home Office continues to put pressure on consumer internet service providers to voluntarily instal BT's CleanFeed technology, a blocking tool that denies access to a list of child pornography and hate-speech sites identified and monitored by the Internet Watch Foundation.
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