CEOP: ‘Children and the role of technology in sexualisation, addiction and bullying’

I’m fresh back from CEOP’s conference: ‘Children and the role of technology in sexualisation, addiction and bullying’, held in central London yesterday. There was so much very interesting material from CEOP, Sony, ELSPA, Beatbullying and UKCCIS amongst other excellent speakers that I’m rather horrified to find I’ve taken about 20 pages of notes. (Why??? Did I think I was going to be tested later?) Much of the deliveries concerned subjects I was already aware of: but then, the target audience wasn’t social media professionals, but teachers, educators, and others working directly with children - and of course the police, who were naturally there in, er, force...

Helen Penn, Head of Education at CEOP set the topic off by racing us through a few decades of aspirational teenager images to prove her point that sexualisation of children is happening earlier and earlier, heavily aided by the advertising industry. Girl’s role models today (and we are primarily talking about girls rather than boys) are likely to be the Paris Hiltons and Katie Prices of this world, and they are encouraged to ape their overt sexuality. Magazines like Barbie, Total Girl & Disney Girl are read by a whopping 20% of six year old girls – not a problem, until you realise that one such magazine was instructing its readers in *pole dancing*, and they push their young readers to aspire to a teenage world, even urging their readers to develop crushes on much older celebrity males. And if that all sounds a bit reactionary, consider this: CEOP then see these really young girls in chat rooms, wiggling their virtual tushes as they been taught, and thinking it perfectly normal to have online & offline relationships with *much older men*. Paedophiles often justify their behaviour by saying that the abused children were ‘asking for it’. The trend towards younger and younger sexualisation just lends them the excuse.

It’s easy to forget how much children are influenced by what is shown to them, how they simply lack the filters that adults have acquired, how they have little idea of what is really inappropriate or inadvisable behaviour until it’s too late. Thanks to Helen for showing us this video - do have a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJF50kwwRJE (As a parent, I actually found it terrifying. I might have to play it to myself every day as a reminder to model good behaviour and try to keep my stress-induced traffic tantrums to myself ...)

The message is constantly dripping out to children and to abusers of children that no-one and nothing is innocent any more. Not for the first time, I am very happy to be the mother of sons, not daughters. Adolescence and young adulthood starts earlier and lasts longer. Primary schoolgirls hold their definition of self-worth in what the mirror reflects. Liz Dean, from The Brighton and Hove National Health Service who has conducted research into young people’s use of pornography, said that 50% of teens view porn twice a week or more – and that their idea of a normal body is so warped and distorted by pornographic ‘ideals’ that many can’t cope with the reality of their own, real, diverse bodies and body parts. Pro-ana (pro-eating disorder) groups are proliferating on the web: not illegal, so they can’t be pulled down, but poisonous to vulnerable young people’s image of themselves.

And then there’s the increasing trend of posting up provocative pictures of yourself, to attract a boyfriend on your Facebook profile or a teenage dating site: videos of first sexual encounters, sexting images sent to a boyfriend and passed on. These, as Izzy Neis says, are the ‘internet cement’: they’ll be on the web forever, to be seen by cyberbullies, future employers and paedophile networks. Even when they’ve switched on their social network privacy settings so that only friends can see pictures, the fact is that young people collect so-called ‘friends’ as a status symbol, and can easily have hundreds of potentially dubious strangers able to see everything they do in Facebook or Bebo.

The conference covered much more than just these issues: there was a great 100-mile-a-minute lecture by Mark Griffiths from the International Gaming Research Unit on whether or not the internet and playing online games can truly be addictive for young people (answer: there hasn’t really been enough research yet, but yes, possibly, for a few). Jason Debono took us through the set up and working of UKCCIS, Sarah Dyer of Beatbullying presented their Cybermentors programme which I’ve already mentioned here a few times, and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe – well, Sony had a bad day there. The very nice Phil Priston was nearly at the end of a well-presented slot of their community management and safety/moderation work when he was ambushed by the vociferous crowd, baying for blood, demanding to know why Sony release 18+ violent video games, when it’s entirely possibly they may end up being played by under 18’s. It’s a good point ... but not really one that Phil was able to answer in his role as Community Manager unfortunately.

Anyhow, thanks to all at CEOP for a really engaging - and occasionally alarming - day. It’s good to hear about so many who are doing what they can to keep the children safe, but it’s a scary world out there. If you want more information and resources on keeping children safe, visit CEOP’s ThinkUKnow portal.