Banning Websites & Parental Concerns

BANNING WEBSITES

Recently the government urged internet service providers to ban websites which promote illegal activities. This request brings about many legal, moral and ethical issues such as:-

• Censorship / Freedom of speech – people have the right to say what they want.

• You should not use the internet to promote illegal activities; by allowing them there you are promoting them.

• Certain people and children can be wrongly influenced by this type of material and do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do.

• By driving them from main sites you are making them more attractive and more people will then look at them.

• Who has the right to censor the internet? Will the government go on to ban information that puts them in a bad light?

• Is it practical to do it? Who is going to police it and resource the enforcement?

PARENTAL CONCERNS

Many parents are concerned with the lack of control over the Internet. Parents are concerned over the following

• As there is no control over people who put information up on the internet, unless special software is used, children can easily gain access to pornographic or violent images and be corrupted.

• Lack of policing of the internet means that information is not checked to ensure that it is correct, very hard for children to be able to check the accuracy of the information.

• Laws cover the production or distribution of pornographic material but as much of the material comes from other countries, where it might be legal, not much can be done to stop it.

• Real worry is that paedophiles use the Internet for distributing pornographic pictures of young children and they also can use it to lure children into meetings with them after they have spoken to them in chat rooms.

• Other offensive material such as pictures of hounds ripping a fox to pieces.

• Other answers may discuss e.g. Cyber bullying / consequences of plagiarism / bias of information (accuracy) / copyright / lack of privacy.

• Addiction to computer games e.g. particularly online games / social networking – many children spend hours playing computer games and their social skills and schoolwork can suffer as a result / could suffer rsi.

For example in December 2020 there were huge concerns raised over an inappropriate APP that came out targeting younger pupils.

EXPLOITATION ALERT CUNCH LINE CHRONICLES APP

The Cunch Line Chronicles App is advertised as ‘a light-hearted, satirical take on the darker side of urban UK culture’.

In reality, this app is an exploitation risk for young and vulnerable people as it appears to have an in-chat facility which could enable grooming and recruitment to real life County Lines gangs.

The National Crime Agency, National Policing Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme and the National County Lines Co-ordination Centre are aware of this app. The agencies are investigating the action that can be taken to protect young and vulnerable people from the risk of being exploited via this app.

For further advice on eSafety please visit either of these links:

https://oursaferschools.co.uk/2020/11/19/2-games/

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/Support-tools/