An overview of how children use the media, how it effects them, the issue with ISPs and why we should protect Net neutrality.

1. Children and The Media

2. Controlling the Internet
In March 2017, the law passed by Obama, stating that ISPs have to ask
users for permission to share their personal information – including
location data -- was repealed. Under this law, all of:
"precise geo-location, financial information, health information, children’s
information, social security numbers, web browsing history, app usage history
and the content of communications”
could not be taken from users and used without their own permission.
With the election of President Trump, this law has been revoked,
increasing the freedom of the media.
For a small business of 300 employees with two locations, that tax
could run as high as $10,000 a year for hardware, licensing and
support for VPN services to protect communications from prying eyes.
Evan Greer (Fight for the Future Rights Group): “Today Congress proved once again that they
care more about the wishes of the corporations that fund their campaigns than they do about the safety and
security of their constituents. People from across the political spectrum are outraged and every lawmaker
who votes to take away our privacy will regret it come election day.”
Craig Arron (Free Press, who support a more ‘open’ internet): "There are a lot of
companies that are very concerned about drawing attention to themselves and being regulated
on privacy issues, and are sitting this out in a way that they haven't sat out previous privacy
issues.”

3. ISP Privacy Laws
• Privacy regulations will no
longer favour certain
companies over others, it
will be a more equal field of
enterprise.
• Users will have privacy
protection from ISPs,
nonetheless, they will
weaken.
• Social media websites will
no longer have the upper
hand in harvesting data and
no longer dominate digital
advertising.
• This monitoring could help
to regulate the content that
we are exposed to on the
internet.
Benefits of the Repeal Disadvantages of the Repeal
• ISPs can sell your sensitive
data for profit whilst you
have neither given them
permission, nor been given
any thing in return.
• Big companies like Google
are uncomfortable about
drawing attention to
themselves and are worried
that this publication will
tarnish their appearance.

4. How Does This Effect Children?
It is believed that the internet is not designed for
children. Whilst ISPs assume that they are harvesting
information from adults and subsequently targeting
cookies at adults, according to eukidsonline, 87% of
5-7 year olds are using the internet. The scary aspect
of this data comes from the realisation that it is the
same percentage of adults in the UK that are
currently using the internet.
Children do not understand the ways in which the
internet works and how vulnerable they are .
Children are frequently signing up to websites on the internet and inputting personal information
without knowing the consequences. Clicking that little ‘terms and conditions’ box has become
second nature to the youngest generation surfing the internet’s silver waves, but in reality
children don’t understand what they are agreeing to due to the fine print’s impenetrable
language.
Anne Longfield recommended that children should study "digital citizenship" to learn about their
rights and responsibilities online and that social media companies should rewrite their terms and
conditions in far simpler language.

5. How Are Children Using The Internet?
Many are viewing self-harm, violent pornography, animal
cruelty and eating disorder websites and more than a quarter
admit they pretend to be older to access certain sites.
It is reported that children are spending so much time online
that one in three now struggles with offline activities that
require concentration such as reading a book, according to the
report.
Dr. Aric Sigman:“The problem with this generation is that we
accept there should be limits on the consumption of many
things, such as sunlight or sugar and salt, but screen time is not
something that is thought of as consumption. “
One in seven under-16s are so addicted to the web that they spend four hours or more glued to
the screen, more than a third begin to feel “angry and grumpy” if they cannot get online whilst
one in five expressed concerns that they spend more time in the virtual world than with real
people. While more than half said they had accidentally accessed inappropriate content online,
one in 11 admitted looking for it deliberately.
A small study of how the children are vulnerable on the internet is Matteo’s case:
He plays a game online where one person has to draw something while the other
person guesses what it is. When another player couldn’t guess Matteo’s drawing
they resorted to calling him an ‘a-hole’, upsetting Matteo and making his mother
feel extremely guilty for allowing him to have access to this .

6. How Are Children Using The Internet?
Barnardo’s, a children’s charity, agreed that the “sheer scope of the internet and its ubiquity
means … that today’s children increasingly may not even distinguish ‘the internet’ as one
holistic defined arena that can contrast to physical life.” It believed that many young people
are “conceptualising individual platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp, or Snapchat as
different spaces in their life in the way previous generations might have identified ‘school’,
‘scouts’ or ‘dance class’.”

7. Benefits of Children’s Access to The Internet
The internet not only provides an unprecedented range of
information, but also interactive experiences for children to
learn. Ofcom gives the example of a 10-year-old girl learning
Arabic via Skype. Will Gardner of Childnet emphasised the
advantage of being able to communicate within social groups.
He also suggested that it can be “a great source of support and
advice even for young people for a range of different topics with
information that they might not want to ask trusted adults
about”.
The internet is a platform for children to improve on their
literacy, numeracy and social skills through educational
websites, games and programmes as Sesame Street is
famous for. Equally, the internet has benefits which will
develop the intellect of younger generations, for
example, more advanced computer games can improve
problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
Even more appropriately, the internet offers new
opportunities to younger individuals to learn and develop
interests. YouTube offers tutorials to learn how to do new
skills and furthermore, blog and vloggers can be inspiring
to younger children, offering advice and being strong and
supportive role models.

8. Ofcom’s Research
OfCom, or The Office of Communications, is the government approved regulatory
and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal
industries of the UK. Their job to to protect the public from potentally harmful or
offensive material.
“When asked which device they would miss the most if it was taken away, 12-15s
are most likely to say their phone, while 8-11s are most likely to nominate the TV
set (30%), although the number of 8-11s opting for their mobile has nearly
doubled since 2015 (16% vs. 9%).”
“Younger children (3-7) are most likely to watch TV programmes, films, cartoons,
mini-movies, animations or songs, with parents saying this is their child’s favourite
type of YouTube content. As children get older this makes way for music videos,
funny videos/ pranks and content posted by vloggers, with the qualitative research
finding that vloggers in particular are an important source of teen orientated
content.”

9. Can We Control The Internet?
The rapid rise in the use of smart phones and computer tablets
means that banning screen time has become the modern
equivalent of “grounding” children, with three quarters of
parents imposing limits on internet use. Nonetheless, 7 out of
10 children have admitted to sneaking onto the internet behind
their parents backs during their ban.
Just like parents, it seems that the world is unable to regulate
the internet due to the rate at which it’s growing and the
complexities that it’s developing.
Whilst the internet is a self-regulated media, there are certain groups which try to combat the
content available to users. The International Watch Foundation (IWF) is a registered charity
which aims "to minimise the availability of 'potentially criminal' Internet content, specifically
images of child sexual abuse (including child pornography) hosted anywhere, and criminally
obscene adult content in the UK“.
On top of the lack of regulation, it seems that the internet is being developed to become more
difficult for ISPs to regulate them through extra layers of encryption to their systems.
Additionally, anonymous browsers like Tor, which allow you to browse the internet without giving
away your location, are growing in popularity, with 2.5 million daily users at the last count.

10. Protecting Children Online
The NSPCC confirmed that the children they spoke to admitted
that they felt adversely affected by inappropriate content on the
internet: “Young people tell us that they feel anxious, shocked,
and guilty as a result of what they have seen online.”
It is frightening to think about how often inappropriate content
pops up whilst just doing innocent browsing online. The NSPCC
also reported that, “They use a social-networking site to chat to
friends, then on the side-lines there is a news article, an image,
or an advert for pornography that pops up that they are not
expecting but have to deal with there and then, with no context
or anybody around them to help them understand where that
has come from.”
The images surrounding were found on websites kids would be
most likely to access: Facebook, twitter, instagram, online
games websites… These are just a few examples of the casual
dangers that children are exposed to online. Images and articles
which promote damaging, unrealistic ideals of beauty; small,
brief and vague notes which tie children into consenting to
cookies and misleading or inappropriate pop ups.

11. The Dark Web
The ‘Dark Web’ is the term used to refer to the areas of the
internet which are only accessible through special, albeit easily
downloaded, software. This area of the internet allows users to
remain anonymous and untraceable. Many argue that this area
of the internet is “vital for people living in countries where you
can be arrested, tortured, and killed for the things you do
online.” Nonetheless, this area is also being used for illegal
transactions and child pornography.
‘The number of websites found to be hosting explicit and
abusive images of children increased 20 per cent in 2016.’- IWF
As the understanding of the dark web has increased and more and more websites have been take
down, criminals are finding new ways to protect their activities online.
"They use this technique called 'disguised websites' to hide content and make it more difficult to
take it down. This lets them get access to things like payment processing services, which is
something we're concerned about.“ – Sarah Smith, IWF

12. Net Neutrality and Regulation
Net neutrality is the idea that ISPs should not block, slow or
otherwise unfairly discriminate against any website or online
service. This is the reason why start up websites are able to
supplant highly popular sites in the same way that Facebook
replaced Myspace and Myspace replaced Friendster ‘and that
replaced talking to real people’ as John Oliver quotes.
If Net Neutrality was removed, the internet would become
saturated by conglomerates who would be able to afford the
high speed web access whilst smaller companies would be
effectively stuck in ‘the slow lane’, hereby potentially
threatening innovation. Nonetheless, even big companies like
Amazon, Netflix and Google are against ending net neutrality.
Whilst this issue is currently more prominent in America with the election of Trump and his revoking of Obama’s
Open Internet Order, the UK could potentially be facing a similar issue soon due to the Brexit decision as the
company in which OfCom was working with to enforce net neutrality, Berec , is European.
In America, the people in favour of getting rid of net neutrality are large ISPs like Comcast and Verizon who,
worryingly, have a great deal of leverage in what gets put forward to be debated by the Government. In fact, in
2014, Comcast were the second largest organisation to buy government influence, under the military industrial
complex Northrop Grumman. This year, people are claiming that net neutrality is effectively dead in the US.
Nonetheless, Net Neutrality is the reason behind how ‘fake news’ has developed. If all data is treated equally,
there is no distinction between the reliability of BBC and what’s reported on Facebook.

13. The UK’s Battle to Hold on to Net Neutrality
The creator of the internet, Sir Tim Burners Lee has addressed the
Republican decision to end net neutrality in attacking any UK plans to
weaken encryption. Whilst Amber Rudd suggests that there should be no
safe space for terrorists to communicate online, Lee has stated that ‘giving
the authorities a key to unlock coded messages would have serious
consequences.’
"Now I know that if you're trying to catch terrorists it's really tempting to
demand to be able to break all that encryption but if you break that
encryption then guess what - so could other people and guess what - they
may end up getting better at it than you are," he said.
"We're talking about it being just a human right that my ability to
communicate with people on the web, to go to websites I want without
being spied on is really, really crucial."
Addressing the issue of fake news, Lee says, "Fake things, false things tend to propagate more than truth and in a
way maybe hatred tends to propagate in some cases more than love.“ He goes on to explain that it is everyone’s
responsibility to address the issue of fake news and equally, not give it the credit it’s currently getting.