Parents could receive alerts if children try to access harmful websites
PARENTS could get alerts if their children try to access harmful websites following calls for tougher safeguards from the mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey.
Plans being considered by ministers would aim to stop young people viewing damaging content by tipping off their parents to any troubling online activity, allowing them to intervene.
It comes after Brianna’s mother, Esther Ghey, called for similar protections to be put in place, as well as a ban on under-16s accessing social media on their smartphones.
Policy makers are sceptical about the benefits of further limiting children’s access to certain content, as anyone willing to use the dark web could find a workaround. But it is understood they are looking at strengthening tools available to parents to monitor their children’s activity.
One option is sending alerts to parents’ phones when their children try to access potentially harmful websites.
Ministers will have to act quickly if they want to make any reforms, with a general election expected in the autumn and due January next year at the latest.
A government official said: “We’re looking at a number of options. Empowering parents to know what their kids are seeing is really key.”
Ms Ghey has called for “more drastic” action to guard against online harms after it emerged that Scarlett Jenkinson, one of her daughter’s killers, had enjoyed watching murder and torture videos online. Jenkinson and her accomplice Eddie Ratcliffe, both 16, received life sentences last week for the murder of Brianna, who was also 16. They stabbed her 28 times on Feb 11 last year. The pair messaged one another about wanting to kill the teenager and other people they knew, while Jenkinson used a special dark web browser, a matrix of encrypted sites, to watch extreme videos of real people being subjected to graphic violence.
Ms Ghey is campaigning for new laws to prevent under-16s accessing social media on smartphones and stronger controls to flag potentially harmful searches to parents.
Labour has said it is “open-minded” about a possible social media ban, with shadow minister Peter Kyle urging society to “get ahead of the curve” when it comes to protecting children online.
Michelle Donelan, the Technology Secretary, was hoping to meet Brianna’s mother on Wednesday, but the talks were postponed until later in the week after Ms Ghey was caught in a major political row during a Parliament visit.
The spat broke out when Rishi Sunak mocked Sir Keir Starmer’s stance on “defining a woman” during Prime Minister’s Questions, having been told that Ms Ghey – whose daughter was transgender – was watching from After watching PMQS, Ms Ghey met Sir Keir, who said he was “utterly in awe of her strength and bravery”.
She went on to attend a Westminster Hall debate on mindfulness in schools, led by her local MP, Charlotte Nichols.
The Labour backbencher called for the skill to be added to the national curriculum to promote “empathy, compassion and kindness” in the wake of Brianna’s murder.
She paid tribute to Ms Ghey, describing her as “perhaps the most remarkable person I have ever met”.