Rebekah Moffett, Communications Officer, comments on the need to protect our children from harmful content online.
In her final speech to Parliament before it adjourns for summer, Fiona Bruce MP urged the government to introduce age-verification controls on pornography without further delay.
Addressing the House of Commons, Mrs Bruce said:
“an issue of deep concern to parents across the country is the profound harm that can be caused to children all too easily viewing available pornography online. The Government have stated many times, not least in our 2015 manifesto, their intentions to better protect children from online harms, yet I regret to say that they have not followed this up with appropriately expeditious action. That action is urgently needed, particularly bearing in mind that lockdown has increased digital use by children. Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 required robust age verification checks, but they have not been implemented. The Government then said that they would seek to address that with other online harms, but action has progressed slowly. An online harms White Paper was published in April 2019. The consultation closed a year ago, but the Government’s full response has been delayed and is not yet forthcoming. Meanwhile, the proposed online harms Bill has not been introduced, and we understand that it could be 2023-24 before it is enacted and implemented—several years after age verification could have been implemented for pornographic websites under the Digital Economy Act 2017.
“I am not alone in raising these concerns. Many Conservative MPs are extremely concerned. I call on Ministers in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and in other Departments to expedite work on this, so that several more years do not pass before children are better protected from the profound harm that seeing pornography online can cause. I urge Ministers to implement part 3, with age verification, now. We cannot make the internet safe, but we can make it safer.”
Government continues to delay
The government has repeated its promise to introduce the controls on several occasions, most clearly in its 2015 election manifesto, where it stated:
“And we will stop children’s exposure to harmful sexualised content online, by requiring age verification for access to all sites containing pornographic material and age-rating for all music videos.”
Parliament previously approved age-verification controls in December 2018 as part of the Digital Economy Act. However after several delays, including one where civil servants failed to notify their counterparts in the European Union, the Government dropped the plans last October.
This was one of the main policies we encouraged the government to adopt in the 2019 General Election. Some 83% of parents agree that age-verification controls should be in place for online pornography, especially as many children often accidentally access it online. In our General Election policy proposals we considered that “there may be no totally failsafe method, [but] a basic safeguard would still prevent many children from viewing pornography.”
Instead, the government later announced the proposal of a new Online Harms Bill, following a public consultation which closed in February. Although the Online Harms Bill proposed age checks for dangerous sites, it also ran the possibility of endangering freedom of speech by independently regulating what the government called ‘hateful content’. The government offered no definition of what this entailed.
Although the Online Harms Bill was due to be introduced to Parliament in early 2020, thanks to a global pandemic, it never was.
High Court challenge to force plans forward
Now, the High Court has permitted a legal challenge – brought forward by four different age-verification companies and backed by a coalition of children’s charities – to force the government to explain why it failed to implement legislation that it had already passed back in 2018.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern commented:
“We welcome this legal challenge at the High Court. The government continues to promise to bring in age-verification for porn use and failing to deliver. There has been no real effort made to protect children from harmful content online, despite having gone to great lengths to develop the legislation. The government must answer for its failure to implement these important measures.
“It would serve the good of society, as well as many vulnerable and addicted men, women and children, if the Church called for a robust implementation of this policy and fines for those companies that don’t adhere to it.
“It is time the government acted on their promises to introduce age-verification controls. In this time of lockdown when children have been at increased risk of online harm, the government should direct internet service providers not to permit increased access to pornography but rather encourage blocking it.”
Pornography more prevalent in lockdown
Nearly nine in ten adults in the UK and some 99% of 12 to 15-year-olds are online.
With many more accessing the internet in lockdown, the police and many media outlets reported an increased risk of child sexual abuse during lockdown. Sadly sites like ‘Pornhub’ took advantage of the increased internet traffic and began offering its premium services to the entire world for free in an effort to “encourage the importance of staying home and practicing social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.” The effect of this was almost immediate, with data from the site showing that a free trial offered to Europe has spurred a 57% spike in traffic from Italy, at the time the worst affected European country.
Before lockdown even began, a survey by the British Board of Film Classification reported that some 51% of 11 to 13-year-olds had seen porn online at some time. This figure rises to 66% for 14 to 15-year-olds and even higher to 79% of 16 to 17-year-olds. And yet 75% of parents believe their children are not viewing pornography online.
Sadly, schools are not helping to protect children either. New Relationships and Sex Education guidance, which has now been pushed back to a summer term 2021 introduction, would have young children learn about online harms, child abuse and the prevalence of pornography. Although this could be helpful if taught well, one Hull school showed the reality of how this is currently being taught to children in years 7, 8 and 9 (11-14-year-olds) by setting homework to ‘define’ types of pornography – an exercise more likely to expose children to inappropriate material than to protect them from it.
Porn isn’t just play
Much of culture assumes sex is just for play. Porn is sold as something that is light-hearted and fun. Meanwhile the short and long term damages of porn and the costs of society’s misuse of sex are ignored. In our Pure talks, Elisha Kolade tells his story of first being exposed to pornography aged 12. He became a regular user of porn from age 13, eventually leading to an addiction that damaged his cognitive ability and led him to suicidal thoughts.
The Church must deal with this issue. If we want to raise a generation of children that experiences the freedom of living godly sexual lives, rather than trapped in the snares of online addictions, then not only should we be pushing for age-verification, we should start tackling many children’s lack of self-worth and a solid identity. We should be encouraging discipleship and holding each other accountable in love, looking for real conversations.
The Church is the hope of the nation, a hope for a lost generation. We must be unafraid to confront the evils of pornography and bring the darkness of porn out into the light.
