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Internet and Video Games

The Chairman of the Select Committee is absolutely right. That is a problem, but the big problem is that most young people do not understand the different tiers of access, and they are generally making their pages open. It was interesting that when I went into my schools and talked to the youngsters, I found they had no understanding of that at all. For example, they did not understand that some of the photographs that were taken from social networking sites of some of the youngsters in my constituency had never been seen by their parents—the first time they saw those images of their children was in a newspaper. The parents had no idea of the comments written on social networking sites. They saw them for the first time in the national press, sometimes when they or a family member had gone into a newsagent to buy something and saw a photograph of the youngster in the public realm—an image they had not seen before. That caused huge distress. I asked the youngsters and their parents to give me feedback on whether they found the leaflet helpful. Again, many of the comments I received are on my website. It was fascinating that when I went into every class in every primary school and asked the children how many of them had access to the internet, 100 per cent. of hands went up. When I asked how many of them had social networking pages, 100 per cent. of hands went up. When I asked how many of them helped their parents to understand the internet and to do things such as programme the recording of television programmes, 100 per cent. of hands went up.