UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: Digital Impact

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, it is with great trepidation that I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, because she was saying that she knew of many Members of your Lordships’ House who did not feel they were sufficiently qualified to enter into this debate. I am afraid that I am one of those people who has the temerity to take part today, but I am grateful to her because she has introduced the debate expertly and comprehensively, and dealt with almost every aspect of the convention that we are here to talk about.

I am going to be followed by people who know far more about this field than I do—particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, who is going to make her maiden speech this afternoon. As a layman, I want to issue a warning about the damage being done to our children by what are described in the title of this debate as young people’s “online and digital interactions”.

How many times, in how many debates, have we heard someone say, “The welfare of the child is paramount”? We say this constantly, but do we really mean it? If we do mean it and believe it, what, as legislators, are we doing about it? The world is becoming increasingly insensitive to the care and needs of our children. To grow up happily, children need stability as well as love. The very sad reduction in the role of the traditional family in our national life is denying many children the stability they need.

Children are not modernised in the womb. They emerge naked, empty and vulnerable, totally unaware of what their surroundings will be like. If it is a boy, he does not know whether he will be asked to fight with Harold at Hastings, to take sides in the Civil War or maybe go off to Flanders in 1914. Children know nothing until we start to shape them.

For thousands of years, the influences on children’s lives were their parents, family and friends. As they grew up, it would be school friends, teachers and workmates. Suddenly, whether we admit it or not, we have created a parallel universe—a world into which, once they are old enough to press a button or two, children can disappear and we cannot follow or have any idea of what they are doing. It becomes for them a source of entertainment. For some it is a refuge: a place to meet new people, a place to experiment away from supervision. They may talk to people whose real identity they do not know and whose motives may be dubious.

Imagine your child or grandchild perhaps being told by total strangers, children or adults whom neither you nor they have ever met the most intimate details of any and every aspect of life without anyone realising what they are hearing or seeing. There is the very obvious danger of children being persuaded to enter into dangerous relationships—now commonly known as grooming.

I looked at some of the statistics in the report that we are talking about today and I found all of them horrifying. In 2013, 37% of five to seven year-olds used the internet every day. In just one month, December 2013, 44,000 children aged six to 11 visited an adult website. I could go on. Quite frankly, as I said, I find the statistics relating to this debate on the convention utterly horrifying.

When children are young and vulnerable, images and ideas, whether good or bad, leave impressions and help form character traits that last a lifetime and have a huge effect for good or ill on their future happiness. Part of the answer, obviously, is strong, wise parental control, but this by itself cannot work. Many parents will not worry, do not see the size of the problem or simply do not have or make the time to supervise. Even the best parents cannot be on duty every minute—and a minute is perhaps all it takes for serious harm to be done.

As a matter of the greatest urgency, a way must be found to control, edit and supervise what at least our very youngest children can access. As I have said, I am not technically competent enough even to begin to suggest how this might be done, but there must be people who know how we can at least try. Surely those who invented the so-called social media can help us to tame the creature they have created.

One thing is certain: we simply cannot do nothing, for that would be to admit that we have produced a monster that is beyond our control, and the long-term effects on our children will be catastrophic. History will show whether all these new contrivances, whether it be the internet, websites, Google, Facebook, YouTube or even Snapchat, have brought us more good than harm. For the sake of our nation’s children, we must do all we can as quickly as possible to tip the scales the right way. Going online must not be allowed to send our children off course.