The Byron Review

The Byron Review is an independent report into the risks posed by inappropriate web and game-based content for children and young people. It supported by the UK's Department for Children, Schools and Families. It is being headed up by Dr Tanya Byron and will finally report in March 2008. The responses on her Bebo site make interesting reading.

The review, commissioned by The Prime Minister will look into the risks to children from exposure to potentially harmful or inappropriate material on the Internet and in video games. I do hope that the trawl for information for the review will be a wide so that we get to know, on a world scale, what is happening rather than, as is usual, on a very anglo-centric one.

For me one of the main issues developing from early reports concerning the Review is the perception of 'danger'. It would be wonderful if , just for once, the immense power of the advances in technology and the ability for people all over the world to interact with each other on a social, political and even interest level could be seen as positive not negative.

The media/press do their best to hype up any issues associated with social networking that they can find. Yesterday the BBC managed, in their early morning news, to link the loss of the data discs by the HMRC offices to Facebook in one swift sentence. Tension makes good news, obviously! The public at large are being ill informed and ill served by being led down a path of doom and gloom with regard to what our young people see as a gigantic leap forward in their ability to free themselves from their geography and expand into a much wider world.

The safety of our young people has to be a prime concern but that is, as it always has been for me, one for education. In your kitchen, are there any knives? Or have you removed them or put bolts on the kitchen door so that children cannot get in to see/find/use them? We know that useful things may be potentially harmful but, in terms of a sort of 'cost/benefit' analysis we make an educated decision about them and move on.

There are key issues here with regard to curriculum in our schools and the necessary importance of personal safety education. (Isn't that one of the aspects of PSHE sessions?)

Dr Tanya Byron appears to me to be a sensible person who will report sensibly without hype. I just hope that the media manage to report her report in the same way.