Parents must ask their children what they're viewing online says Staffordshire expert

Parents across Staffordshire and Cheshire are being urged to keep talking to their children about what they're doing online - as new rules kick in tackling illegal activity.

Ofcom gave tech firms until today to make sure their platforms are tackling things like fraud, terrorism, suicide and child grooming.

Professor Catherine Flick is an expert in online ethics and safety from the University of Staffordshire.

She said: "There's two sides to protecting children from harm, one is stopping them from viewing the content another is from the child's perspective is building resilience for what happens if they do see that content. That's where parents and schools can step in to help children build that resilience and give them to tools to know what to do.

"This needs to be a constant conversation, just like you'd ask your kid what their day was like at school today. It also needs to be part of the curriculum on how to be a good digital citizen, not just being good online yourself but actually learning skills on how to deal with other peoples behaviour and problematic content."

What Ofcom requires tech firms to deliver

From 17 March 2025, sites and apps will then need to start implementing safety measures to mitigate serious risks, and codes are now set out on measures firm can take.

Ofcom says it wants...

• Senior accountability for safety. To ensure strict accountability, each provider should name a senior person accountable to their most senior governance body for compliance with their illegal content, reporting and complaints duties.
• Better moderation, easier reporting and built-in safety tests. Tech firms will need to make sure their moderation teams are appropriately resourced and trained and are set robust performance targets, so they can remove illegal material quickly when they become aware of it, such as illegal suicide content. Reporting and complaints functions will be easier to find and use, with appropriate action taken in response. Relevant providers will also need to improve the testing of their algorithms to make illegal content harder to disseminate.
• Protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation online. While developing our codes and guidance, we heard from thousands of children and parents about their online experiences, as well as professionals who work with them. New research, published today, also highlights children’s experiences of sexualised messages online[4], as well as teenage children’s views on our proposed safety measures aimed at preventing adult predators from grooming and sexually abusing children.[5] Many young people we spoke to felt interactions with strangers, including adults or users perceived to be adults, are currently an inevitable part of being online, and they described becoming ‘desensitised’ to receiving sexualised messages. Protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation online. While developing our codes and guidance, we heard from thousands of children and parents about their online experiences, as well as professionals who work with them. New research, published today, also highlights children’s experiences of sexualised messages online[4], as well as teenage children’s views on our proposed safety measures aimed at preventing adult predators from grooming and sexually abusing children. Many young people we spoke to felt interactions with strangers, including adults or users perceived to be adults, are currently an inevitable part of being online, and they described becoming ‘desensitised’ to receiving sexualised messages.

Professor Flick from the University of Staffordshire added that it's inevitable that children will continue to come across harmful and problematic content. "As children get older they're going to be exposed to different material or they're going to be affected in different ways." she said.

"So children going through puberty are going to be affected by self-image issues and vulnerable to content that plays on that, yes it will change as the child grows so this must be a constant conversation."

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