Social media firms act ‘like drug barons’ to hook children
Social media companies are acting like drug barons in the way they exploit children without ensuring their safety online, the chief executive of the NSPCC, Britain’s leading child protection charity, warns today.
In an exclusive interview with The
Daily Telegraph to open today’s NSPCC’S annual conference on child safety online, Peter Wanless says he is “fed up” sitting down with firms such as Facebook, Google and Youtube, trying to persuade them to take effective action to protect children.
For years he says the NSPCC has campaigned for the social networking companies to design safety into their businesses, such as simple technical blocks to prevent sexual predators finding children’s locations, sending out mass friends requests to entrap them or invading their privacy.
Yet, says Mr Wanless, it remains a “Wild West web” where, according
How Safe are our Children?, the NSPCC’S annual report to be published today, a quarter (23.6 per cent) of children aged 11 to 16 have been contacted by an unknown adult, one in six (15.5 per cent) have been asked to supply a sexual image or message and more than 3,000 online child grooming cases have been recorded in just a year.
He recalls talking privately to the NSPCC’S council last year where he contrasted how a duty of care was built into the offline world for children’s products and services – such as bans on chokeable objects, lead paint and sharp points – yet there was no equivalent duty of care in the online world.
Instead, he says: “Some of these social media companies deploy tactics that drug barons would be proud of. They are very sophisticated in hooking young people into being present on their sites and logged on with them.
“This fear of missing out idea is a feature of a considerable number of anxiety-related calls that we get through Childline. There’s no doubt the number and nature of experiences with which they are seeking to hook young people can feel overwhelming to them.”
He says he does not want statutory time limits for children as the web can benefit them educationally and socially, but he believes in legally enforced minimum standards to protect children from online abuse or crime and ensure they had a “healthy experience” on the internet.
“It’s great that The Daily Telegraph is promoting a national conversation [through its Duty of Care campaign] about this,” he says. “We all feel that everything in moderation is how life is healthy. Yet, let’s not deny children their passions, but let’s be absolutely confident that if they are online for one, three or six hours that they are not betraying their geographic location, not engaging with people that leaves them open to being groomed and potential criminal activity, and even death.”
Sitting in a fifth-floor office at the NSPCC’S headquarters overlooking the trendy bars of Shoreditch and Hoxton in east London, he describes how the location epitomised the battle lines between the “Wild West web” and the young victims of internet predators. On the one hand there is Gemma Ward, a 17-year-old who Mr Wanless has helped at the NSPCC and who waived her right to anonymity to provide lessons for others in her experience of being groomed online at the age of 15.
Michael Wood, 34, a paedophile, messaged her through Twitter then used “emotional blackmail”, promised Coldplay tickets and begged for naked photographs before meeting and abusing her. “Gemma wrote an open letter to Matthew Hancock [the Culture Secretary] about the need for legislation. She wanted to help us raise awareness of being groomed online,” says Mr Wanless.
“She is extraordinarily brave and determined and untypical of young people who have experienced this type of [crime]. For the majority, they are utterly ashamed, devastated and disappointed at their behaviour. Helping them to understand it is not their fault is quite a challenge.”
By contrast, says Mr Wanless, in the offices, warehouses and bars of Shoreditch and Hoxton there is the buzz of entrepreneurs dreaming up new apps and web applications, but without any regulatory duty of care. “All around here will be people thinking about how they hook people into something that will make money. They are not giving the first thought to children’s safety. Why would they as they are excited about new services,” he says. “But if they were aiming a product at young people that wasn’t on an online service, they would have all sorts of protections and regulations. I struggle with why some of these larger companies are not embracing minimum standards that protect children from crimes online.
“I don’t know why one of them hasn’t taken the lead. It would be a brilliant decision because of the public impatience for a safer internet. But if they are not going to take advantage of that individually, let’s do it together. The beauty of doing it together [with the Government, other charities and the firms] is that we can then design the safety into the new and emerging sites.”
Facebook denied it factored in addictive behaviour to its product design. A spokesperson said: “Safety is our priority, which is why we’ve spent over a decade working with safety experts to address things like cyberbullying, grooming, and
‘Here people are thinking about how they hook people into something that will make money. They are not giving the first thought to children’s safety’
‘I struggle with why some of these larger companies are not embracing minimum standards that protect children from crimes’
supporting well-being.” In his speech at the NSPCC conference, which Mr Hancock will also address, Mr Wanless will outline his vision for new laws including safe accounts for under-18s with high privacy settings, controls over who they connect with and clear, child-friendly rules and reporting buttons.
In addition, he will say he wants social media companies to reveal how many safety reports and complaints they get and how they deal with them. In the five years since he came to the NSPCC, there has been an explosion in online abuse. In the 10 years since Tanya Byron, a clinical psychologist and NSPCC trustee, proposed a voluntary code of minimum standards, there have been 14 attempts and none have been effective, says Mr Wanless. Now it was “all to play for”, with the Government, in the form of Mr Hancock, signalling the prospect of legislation.