Can we keep children safe online?
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2024
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today we look at new online safety rules for under-18s published by the media regulator.
Tech firms have been told to hide harmful content from children, or risk being banned for under-18s.
BBC Breakfast did a special programme on the story. It’s presenters Jon Kay and Sally Nugent tell Adam and Chris what it was like to speak to parents of children subjected to online harms.
Adam and Chris also question Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Michelle Donelan.
In statements, Meta and Snapchat said they had extra protections for under-18s, and offered parental tools to control what children can see on their platforms.
You can join our Newscast online community here: https://tinyurl.com/newscastcommunityhere Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Chris Flynn with Miranda Slade and Sam McLaren. The technical producer was Michael Regaard. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.7 | Morning, Chris. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello. |
| 0:06.7 | Should we talk about our morning television viewing habits today? |
| 0:09.9 | Yeah, it's quite something, isn't it, when you flick on, you know, I flick around every morning and I got a bit radio on and bit of telly and flicking around various news apps and all the rest of it. |
| 0:20.0 | And breakfast telly on BBC one this morning doing this real focus on the |
| 0:26.7 | challenges for young people parents around social media, smartphones, internet. |
| 0:35.0 | And I mean, just sometimes things stop you in your tracks, don't they? |
| 0:38.8 | And hearing John and Sally talking to parents and seeing them scrutinise the regulator and the minister. |
| 0:46.8 | Yeah, I don't know, it just it kind of pulls you up short in the way that some other stuff can occasionally |
| 0:50.5 | kind of wash over you. Well, yeah, and we were both messaging each other while breakfast is ongoing this is |
| 0:54.7 | this is really powerful stuff. So what we've decided to do is we'd basically |
| 0:58.8 | arranged an interview with the science minister Michelle Donovan about this stuff anyway but then we thought you know what |
| 1:06.8 | breakfast was so good why don't we get John and Sally to just kind of explain their story and tell us what it was like meeting the parents and then and |
| 1:14.9 | talking to the boss of Ofcom who was there so we're going to speak to them first and then |
| 1:18.8 | you'll hear me and Chris chatting to Michelle Donovan about the politics of. And the reason this is all happening today |
| 1:24.5 | is that the government's online safety legislation |
| 1:27.7 | actually became law a few months ago. |
| 1:30.6 | What's happening today is that off-com,, the Broadcasting Regulator who are now going to be the |
| 1:35.0 | tech regulator as well, they've published a whole load of documents, which is kind of like a draft |
| 1:40.3 | code of conduct for the social media companies to protect children. |
| 1:44.0 | They're doing a consultation on that before it then becomes official a bit later on. |
... |
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