Good Morning Britain has raised a point that will make plenty of parents uncomfortable: when children as young as ten are sending pictures across the internet, talking to strangers and ending up targeted by scams, at what point did “parental responsibility” become something we outsourced to Silicon Valley?
Because increasingly, the national conversation seems to go like this: children are online for hours, platforms are full of scammers, predators and manipulative nonsense, something horrible happens — and everybody immediately demands that the app, the government, the regulator, the police, the school and possibly the Archbishop of Canterbury do something about it.
Everyone, apparently, except the adult who handed the child the phone.
The Smartphone Has Become Britain’s Most Overworked Babysitter 🤳
There is no question that social-media companies have responsibilities. They design addictive products, collect oceans of data and have spent years insisting they can connect the entire planet while somehow remaining astonished that criminals have also discovered Wi-Fi.
If a platform knowingly makes it easy for children to be exploited, scammed or contacted by dangerous strangers, it should face consequences. Proper consequences. Not a sternly worded statement issued by somebody called Director of Trust and Safety before everybody breaks for lunch.
But pretending the entire problem begins and ends with Mark Zuckerberg is rather convenient.
A ten-year-old does not generally have a mortgage, a driving licence or the authority to decide whether the family kitchen needs an extension. Yet somehow many are given private access to a device containing cameras, messaging apps, payment systems, anonymous strangers and half the known world’s pornography — then sent upstairs with the instruction, “Don’t stay up too late.”
And when it goes wrong, we stare at the technology as though the phone crept into the house through an open window.
Authorities are, of course, responding. Governments are introducing online-safety rules. Regulators are demanding risk assessments. Platforms are being told to improve age checks, reporting systems and protections for minors. Police forces regularly warn families about scams, image-sharing and grooming.
There will be consultations. There will be guidance. There will be investigations. There will be meetings involving twelve organisations, three acronyms and a laminated flowchart.
And then what?
Because no regulator can physically stand in your living room and ask why an eleven-year-old has unrestricted access to Snapchat at midnight.
No social-media law can replace a parent occasionally saying, “Give me the phone.”
No government department can supervise a child’s private messages from Whitehall, unless we want to solve online safety by creating the Department for Checking Tyler’s DMs.
That does not mean blaming parents for every crime committed against children. A child who is manipulated or scammed is the victim. Responsibility for criminal behaviour sits with the offender. Platforms should also be required to make their services safer.
But safeguarding has never worked on the principle that everybody else is responsible.
If a child was wandering around a railway station at two in the morning talking to random adults, most people would not respond by demanding Network Rail redesign the station. They would reasonably ask why the child was there unsupervised.
The internet is somehow treated differently because it arrives through a shiny rectangle.
That rectangle can reach more strangers than any railway station in Britain.
The risk is that we create an enormous national machinery of regulation while avoiding the embarrassingly simple part of the problem: children need boundaries.
So we will get tougher rules, parental-control tools, age-assurance systems, awareness campaigns and probably another minister standing behind a lectern announcing that “online harms must be tackled.”
Excellent.
But if the same ten-year-old still has a smartphone in the bedroom, unrestricted apps and nobody checking what they are doing, what exactly have we fixed?
Real improvement probably requires something spectacularly unfashionable: shared responsibility.
Platforms should design safer services. Regulators should enforce meaningful rules. Police should pursue criminals. Schools should teach digital literacy.
And parents should parent.
Not spy on every message. Not ban technology. Not wrap children in bubble wrap until university.
Just apply to the internet the same basic supervision we already understand everywhere else.
Know where your children are. Know who they are talking to. Set limits. Explain scams. Explain that sending an image online can mean losing control of it forever. And occasionally endure the terrible hardship of being called “the worst parent in the world” because you switched the Wi-Fi off.
Because Britain can regulate social media until the paperwork develops its own postcode.
But no Act of Parliament can replace an adult paying attention.
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Challenges: Who Is Actually Responsible for Keeping Children Safe Online?
Should social-media companies carry most of the responsibility, or have parents become too willing to hand children a smartphone and expect regulators to do the supervising? Where should the line be drawn between corporate responsibility and ordinary parenting? Tell us what you think in the Chameleon News blog comments. 💬🔥
👇 Comment, like and share — and tell us whether Britain needs tougher tech companies, tougher parenting, or both.
🏆 The best comments will be included in the magazine.
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