Online Risks and Opportunities

So, we have many reports on our website. And if I just say that one of the really key findings of our work so far has been the ways in which, as children go on the internet more and more and younger and younger, we can see that they gain more opportunities and they are developing skills as they use the internet, but they're also encountering more of the risks. And much of our work has been so focused on trying to find ways of minimizing those risks. And the difficulty is that many parents, educators, and policymakers instinctively tend to take a rather restrictive approach and try to find ways of reducing what children encounter online because they don't want them to encounter pornography, bullying, and contact with strangers, which is Understandable. The struggle is that as we restrict children, we also prevent them from gaining those learning opportunities which give them a chance to develop resilience and build digital skills, and also get many of the opportunities that the internet can offer. And indeed, what we find across many countries is that parents and educators are becoming so restrictive and so worried about the risk of harm that children are not gaining many of the opportunities that they could, and that the internet is so brilliant at providing in terms of learning and participation, creativity, and expression.