BMJ  2008;336:803 (12 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39540.565208.AD

Feature

Safety nets

Rebecca Coombes, freelance journalist

1 London

rcoombes@bmj.com

doi: 10.1136/bmj.39525.442674.AD

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Vulnerable young people can access pro-suicide sites with relative ease, so what can be done about it? Concerned parents can act by installing filtering and monitoring software and appropriate firewalls. However, a six month national study published last month, Safer Children in a Digital World, which laid the ground for the first UK strategy for child internet safety, found that many parents were poorly informed about technology (www.dfes.gov.uk/byronreview). "I wouldn’t listen to my parents anyway, as they don’t know enough," one 17 year old girl told a focus group organised by the study.

Study author Tanya Byron, a child psychologist, recommended tighter regulation of some harmful sites—including those giving graphic details of suicide methods and chatrooms dedicated to the promotion of suicide.

In the UK, child pornography, sexual grooming of children, and racism are all illegal and can be dealt with by the Internet Watch Foundation, a . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Suicide and the internet
Lucy Biddle, Jenny Donovan, Keith Hawton, Navneet Kapur, and David Gunnell
BMJ 2008 336: 800-802. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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