Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Voluntary Code of Conduct for Social Networking Sites

The Home Office is set to announce a voluntary code of conduct for social networking sites such as Bebo, Myspace and Facebook.

The code of conduct will suggest that social networking sites explore age verification methods to ensure that underage users are unable to sign up. It will also ask the sites to better outline the numerous privacy settings that are available to their users, as well as warn them of the potential risks associated with posting your details online.

Many social network sites already have a minimum age requirement of around 13 or 14 years to join, but many feel that this policy is not being enforced strictly enough.

The Home Office's decision to draw up guidelines was prompted after Ofcom published research on the impact social networking sites have had on our lives in the UK. The research, which surveyed 5,000 adults and 3,000 children, was intended “to encourage the industry to do the right thing.” 

The study found that a massive two and a half million children aged between eight and 17 had created profiles on Bebo, Friendster or another social networking site. Scarier still, it indicated that a quarter of all children in the UK with internet access aged between 8 and 11 had created accounts on a social networking site, even though they were too young to do so.

The research also found that 33% of parents admitted to setting no rules for their children’s use of social network websites, while 43% of children said that their parents had failed to set any rules for their use of social network sites. This shows that too many parents are ignoring the risks associated with these sites, which is putting their children in danger. As Robin Blake, head of media literacy at Ofcom, said: “Parents who allow their children to go online without supervision need to recognise that their children could be at some risk.”

Source:

BBC

The Times