Encouraging progress

Progress made over net porn safeguards

Lyndon Bowring, Executive Chairman of CARE, comments on the causes close to the heart of the Christian community

How precious our children are! Jesus spoke of the need to protect their innocence, declaring, “If anyone causes one of these little ones – those who believe in me – to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung round their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea,” (Matthew 18:6). So when we learn of child abuse, there’s a feeling of outrage and deep sadness that young lives are being spoiled.

In CARE we’ve become aware of two specific dangers: first of children accessing pornography and other inappropriate material – in some cases, deliberately seeking but others accidentally stumbling on it. Then there’s the harm caused by online behaviour such as ‘cyberbullying’, sexting, encouraging self-harm, radicalisation and grooming.

At CARE, we’re determined to improve online safety for our young people to ensure they can be as protected from harmful material online as they are offline. I’m sure you will share our concerns about the dreadful damage inflicted by internet pornography and the fact that most teenagers have encountered inappropriate material online, but this month there’s some good news! Although the government had dragged its feet since a law was passed way back in 2017 to regulate and restrict inappropriate material but never put into action, we’re now seeing progress.

The Online Safety Bill currently going through Parliament includes some welcome changes from previous pieces of legislation, especially following a significant rebellion in January by 37 Conservative MPs, including senior figures Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel and several Christian backbenchers.

So now we believe Ofcom will be made responsible for ensuring that online providers remove illegal material from their platforms, particularly to protect children. Senior executives of online companies will be held personally liable for massive fines if the rules are flouted.

But there’s still room for improvement – the proposed age verification measures need to be made more robust and the Bill should also require that the restrictions on ‘adult’ material that’s not on the internet equally apply to the online world.

A ‘legal but harmful’ test is used to prohibit such content being shown in cinemas or sold on DVD in the UK. It makes sense that anything banned offline should also be illegal online.

CARE’s Senior Policy Officer Tim Cairns said: “If we fail to act, generations to come will look back and wonder why we allowed children free access to the most extreme pornographic content imaginable. This isn’t about adults’ personal freedom or prudishness, as some claim. It’s about protecting vulnerable human beings from something that demonstrably harms them.”

This article first appeared in the April 2023 edition of Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.