New guidelines on how to keep online environments safe for children

Today being Safer Internet Day, we’re really pleased to announce that comprehensive guidelines for how to moderate online environments for children have today been launched by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. (UKCCIS)

The guidelines were first produced  by a Home Office sub-committee in 2005, when Facebook was a fraction of its size, Club Penguin was just launching, Moshi Monsters was still two years away, and Twitter didn’t exist. New guidelines were needed to take into account the fast pace of change in technology and user behaviour over the last six years, and those released today are designed to create best practice principles that can be applied to new technology innovation as it occurs; and be updated as major changes take place.


These new guidelines have been drafted with input from industry, charities and child safety experts; and (as did the 2005 version) include specialist moderation advice from eModeration and other leading UK moderation agencies.  The guidelines - Good practice guidance for the moderation of interactive services for children – are designed to give good practice guidance to the providers of interactive environments used by children, such as social networks, MMOGs, forums and messages boards; chat and instant messaging  and blogs and microblogs such as Twitter.   Really, anyone who is involved in sites or online activities which might attract UGC from under 18's should download a copy of the (free) revised guidelines.

The document:

• Describes the different types of user interactive services
• Informs organisations of the potential risks to children using interactive services, including: bullying; sexual exploitation and grooming; self-harm and destructive behaviours
• Informs organisations of the issues they should take into account when considering what safeguards to deploy
• Describes the types of moderation that can be used
• Helps organisations to develop, review or update policies on the recruitment, selection, training and supervision of moderators to safeguard against unsuitable individuals gaining contact with children; and reporting of incidents and concerns. 

The guidelines can be downloaded from the UKCCIS site here.  
In the UK, Safer Internet Day is being organised by the new UK Safer Internet Centre.  Go to www.saferinternet.org.uk for details of activities taking place today across the country.