Responding to Britain’s mass immigration surge

Olave Snelling and Pippa Smith discuss pornography and the need to protect our children.

In the late 1980s, while filming at a school in Coventry for a series of ITV programmes on ethics and morality in the nation's life with Gerald Priestland, former Religious Affairs Correspondent for the BBC, an extraordinary and alarming finding was made.

In this deprived area of high-rise flats some distance from the city, request was made to film in the school playground, and later to talk to mothers and activists who were concerned to provide after-school activities for the children who otherwise had nothing. Filming completed, we talked to the headmistress, explaining to her that we had noticed a particular absence of the kind of 'playing' normally associated with large numbers of children in school playgrounds.

“I am not surprised,” said the headmistress, “My children do not know how to play.” She went on to explain that, in the large majority of households in the area, fathers were out of work. This was at a time when thousands lost their jobs because the machine tool industry (for which Coventry was famous) had hit the buffers, as had many other commercial and industrial enterprises. There was nothing for any of them, or their wives, to do. There was not even enough money to catch a bus into the city to do a little shopping.

Instead, they sat indoors and watched TV - but mainly explicit pornography, from early morning until late at night. Children watched this material before they went to school and would watch more when they came home. They were so de-sensitised to anything normal that they had no idea how to play as normal children would. That was in the 80s. Imagine what it is like now.

Children who had been exposed to explicit pornography were so de-sensitised to anything normal that they had no idea how to play as normal children would.

The Smartphone Generation – and its Consequences

Today, the situation is far worsened by the ubiquitous presence of technology. Smartphones, tablets and computers make even the youngest of children incredibly vulnerable to explicit and harmful material in circulation online – this is no longer an issue exclusive to television and ‘offline’ sources like DVDs and videos.

• 81% of 13-18 year olds have smartphones.¹ Smartphone ownership is now routine for children as young as nine.²
  
• At least 37% of 3-4 year olds go online; 28% of 3-4 year olds have their own tablet.³
  
• Within the 16-24 age group, 99% claim to use social media and say it accounts for 18% of all the time they spend using media and communications. On average, 16-24s spent 2 hours 26 minutes per day using social media in 2016; 61% use their smartphones to access it.⁴

Meanwhile, parents are trailing behind:

• 23% of parents say they have trouble controlling their children’s screen use.⁵
  
• 83% of parents have never received information about sexting (the sending of sexually explicit images of oneself via text or over the internet) and 84% of parents have never looked for it. 50% of parents want to learn more.⁶
  
• 42% have spoken to their children about sexting at least once, but 19% do not intend ever to have a conversation about it.⁷

Fighting to Block the Material

The effect of violent, horrific video material and pornography on children (let alone adults) is well-known, but little-recognised officially. Once seen, it cannot be unseen. It is highly addictive. It is utterly destructive. Pornography is a multi-billion-dollar industry and the exploitation of children and many adults caught up in the making of this material is a worldwide problem.

There are a number of heroes and heroines involved in trying to get this atrocious material blocked, not least Baroness Howe, CBE, who, after many years of trying, is seeing the Digital Economy Bill making its way through Parliament.

The effect of horrific video material and pornography on children (let alone adults) is well-known, but little-recognised officially.

This Bill would introduce Age Verification legislation, that would require all commercial providers of online pornography to have age verification controls in place to stop under-18s from accessing the material.

Where websites refuse to comply, the Age Verification Regulator (the British Board of Film Classification, the BBFC) would notify them and could, if required, disrupt them by cutting off their ancillary services. In the case of persistent infringement, these sites could actually be blocked in the UK. The Secretary of State, Karen Bradley, has declared the Government's interest to carry through legislation to protect under-18s and to make age verification compulsory for sources of this material in the UK.

But there are still problems.

Digital Economy Bill: Age Verification

Age verification is not a perfect, catch-all solution for the pornography crisis. If introduced as a legal requirement, it would only cover the 50 largest commercial porn websites operating in the UK, which the BBFC says is proportionate, but which is not exhaustive. It may also only cover the four major internet service providers (ISPs), leaving many other smaller ones left out.

This also leaves a lot of other media platforms (e.g. social media) unregulated, providing ready access to 18+ content. The majority of social media sites set a lower age limit of 13 for use of their sites, but 75% of all 10-12 year olds in the UK are on them anyway.

Internet service provider Sky has questioned the effectiveness of age verification checks and installed its own alternative solution: a Broadband Shield, which filters out harmful content automatically and is turned on for their internet customers by default (Sky is the only major internet service provider to do this). 62% of Sky internet users now benefit from its protection, compared to a much lower take-up of 4-10% when the default was set to 'off’.

Attempt to Hijack the Bill

The House of Lords.

Meanwhile, as reported last week by Prophecy Today UK, the Government is planning to table an amendment to the Digital Economy Bill to further water down its suggested protections. Bowing to pressure from Labour and the Lib Dems, this amendment would make explicit material currently illegal in the UK (i.e. material that is so harmful it is considered beyond age classification) legally accessible to adults – and so theoretically accessible to children (given the weaknesses of age verification as described above).

And so, a Bill intended to protect children and young people from the terrible impacts of pornography could cause untold further harm.

The Digital Economy Bill was meant to protect young people – but it could cause untold further harm.

This is all deeply concerning and comes before the Lords on Monday 20 March. The problem within the House of Lords is that most Labour and Lib Dem Peers are libertarian and outnumber Conservatives.

After the vote, the Bill will return to the Commons, where the amendment must be resisted by MPs.

It cannot be beyond the wit of man to understand that even over-18s are going to be affected by the hideous material these Peers want to liberalise (indeed, the BBFC knows that they would be). It is important to note that sex crimes have risen by 50% in the last 10 years and violent crime is also rising. Women and girls, as well as boys and men, will be more vulnerable.

We desperately need protection at this stage – not further liberalisation.

The Terrible Fruit

There has been a tripling in numbers of children reported to police for indecent images offences in the last three years, to more than 2,000.⁸ According to IWF Research UK, “Girls as young as 7 are being targeted online and posting explicit images of themselves – in some cases the material was secretly recorded on internet calling services and then posted by a third party.”⁹

A generation of children and young people are being betrayed - internet service providers and platforms such as Google and social media must be challenged to be responsible and provide the best and most effective protection.

Online pornography is creating a public health crisis in our young people, whilst children are being driven to mental breakdown and even suicide by harassment on social media. The effect of consumption of pornography and violent material is a time-bomb waiting to go off. Our children are at risk.

Please consider emailing your MP – and/or a member of the House of Lords – today.

Olave Snelling & Pippa Smith
Working Party on the Family
Lords & Commons Family & Child Protection Group

References

1 YouGov’s SMIX Kids Report, February 2014.

2 DfE Research, 2016.

3 Ofcom, 2014.

4 Ofcom: Communications Market, 2016.

5 Action for Children, January 2016.

6 NSPCC Report, 2016.

7 Ibid.

8 1 in 6 reported to police for indecent images are under 18. NSPCC, 1 September 2016.

9 IWF Research UK. See also their 2015 report on this issue.