Why I do what I do — Children Need Pro(tech)tion!
So a friend tagged me in this post linking to an article by Sir Peter Wanless who is the current Chief Executive at the NSPCC, His post…
So a friend tagged me in this post linking to an article by Sir Peter Wanless who is the current Chief Executive at the NSPCC, His post and the article are just further proof that we all need to work harder to educate and protect children from becoming just another number in these horrifying statistics.
The work that the NSPCC and other child protection advocacy groups are doing to ensure that the Online Safety Bill is tailored to offer the highest protection and deterrence is of the utmost importance. Nobody expects that the bill will be perfect but it will be better than nothing at all and the beauty of acts of parliament is that they can be amended and changed in the future as it is an iterative process that allows them to change with the times and with new threats as they arise.
Having a “Child Safety Advocate” is another positive step in the right direction as it will add another layer of representation for children when dealing with social media platforms via OFCOM.
If you read the article though this is the part that scares and angers me the most but unfortunately does not shock me:
Police have recorded a surge in child abuse image offences in the UK, with more than 30,000 reported in the most recent year, according to a report from the NSPCC.
30,000! That’s not the number of images, that is the number of offences recorded, each one of those could relate to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of images and each one of those is a child’s life destroyed forever. In just 5 years that number has increased by over 66%, as we grow ever more technically capable we seem to grow less technically capable of dealing with this abhorrent crime, why is that though?
I honestly believe that the big tech companies need to and indeed must do more to combat this evil in the world, it requires a concerted effort within a partnership to do so and for this purpose that should not be a tricky thing. Each social media platform has very good PR teams who do a great job of using the right words, but now is a time for action rather than words.
The part that resonated most with me was:
Teenager Roxy Longworth’s experience shows how fighting the problem can require coordination between corporate rivals. She was 13 when she was contacted on Facebook by a boy four years older than her, who coerced her into sending images via Snapchat. He passed the pictures on to his friends, and a pattern of blackmail and manipulation coerced Roxy into sending even more photos to another boy, which were then shared publicly on social media.
“I sat on the floor and cried,” Roxy said. “I’d lost all control and there was no one to talk to about it. I blocked him on everything and prayed he wouldn’t show anyone the pictures, because of how young I was.
“After that, I was just waiting to see what would happen. Eventually someone in my year sent me some of the pictures and that’s when I knew they were out.”
This is something that I have tried to educate both children and adults about on my YouTube and my blogs, once you click send you have lost control over that image and it's out there forever. This story didn't end the way many have in the past with a tragic suicide of a young person who didn’t know any better.
If we fail to provide an education to a child then we as a society are failing them and I will spend the rest of my days trying to ensure that I at least do what I can to put the right information out there.
I have mentioned before though that this can't be one person's efforts from sporadic entities around the world, I don't have the influence or reach of Sir Peter or the NSPCC which is why it is imperative that there is a joint and concerted effort in the area of education and for this to be effective it must be a top-down initiative from the government.
We need this to be debated in Parliament so that an education programme can be curated by professionals and then mandated to be delivered in all schools, allowing for a standardised and best available education for all children, no matter where they live in the UK. If you believe in this then please sign the petition below and also share it far and wide! Also, reach out to your local MP and point them to it!
If you have any contacts in the media, I would be more than happy to talk to any of them as so far I have been ignored by them all and if we want this petition to succeed we really do need their help!
Petition: Publish mandatory curriculum content on online safety for children
The Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education statutory guidance contains content…petition.parliament.uk
Ultimately I know that the subject is not one that is talked about in polite company which makes this even more difficult to get noticed and that is why I need everybody to help me push this because if we don't succeed it isn't just me that will be destroyed by the failure, we will have failed kids who will become part of future statistics whos future will also have been destroyed.
Thanks for taking the time to read and I hope we can win together!
https://cybersafetyguy.com/membership
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