Interviews// Tanya Byron, Head Of The Government's Gaming Review

SPOnG: Another thing you talked about earlier, which I found really interesting, was this idea that we increasingly live in what you called a ‘risk-averse’ culture… And you mentioned that you hope that your findings might help improve parent’s understandings of the risks that their kids face.

Tanya Byron: Yes, rather than avoiding them. In the ‘Call For Evidence’ I write about how it is important to understand that if you let your kids on the internet unsupervised, it is the equivalent of opening your front door and saying ‘off you go’…

Now, my kids are safe to go to the corner shop on their own occasionally, but that’s because my husband and I have parented them to the point where they can understand and manage the risks involved in doing this. They can cross the road safely, they can look out for each other, we have a nice neighbourhood, the shopkeeper is our mate and so on… But there are also speed limits on the roads and zebra crossings. So we’ve parented them to a point where we are happy to let them go to the shop, but also society provides other safeguards in order to keep them safe.

It’s important that we look at how children are being prepared to manage risk and – crucially – is removing all risk a good thing? Now this is a very, very tricky argument to report on. I could sound like I am saying “we should expose our children to risk and that’s life.” And I’m certainly not saying that either. There are things that I don’t want my children to see or play because they are kids and I don’t think childhood is about being exposed to all the horrors of life. I think there’s plenty of time as you get older and can understand those things better…


SPOnG: But in any area where the government is seen to be telling people, or parents in particular, what to do and how to look after their kids – there are always going to be these extreme points of view.

Tanya Byron: Sure, and I think that is possibly the one reason why I was chosen to front this review, because firstly I’m independent of government and secondly I have a very good relationship with parents through a lot of the work I’ve done in the media. Maybe there was a sense that I would be a person who parents might feel that instead of ‘lecturing’ to them that I might have something genuinely useful to say.


SPOnG: Otherwise there is always the danger of that old phrase that crops up all the time in this context…

Tanya Byron: … Nanny state! I know. Absolutely. But there’s equally the other side of it, which is people saying to government “well what are you going to do about this then?”

This is about trying to work as a democratic society to think about these issues and working together to solve the problems we identify. I mean, at the end of the day it is about kids. It is about the safety and welfare of kids. It’s about protecting kids from risk if they are not ready to deal with it. Enabling kids to deal with risk if they are ready to learn about it.

Looking at all sorts of things such as parental conversations, monitoring, moderation on online games, filtering of access and all the other stuff that you know about just as well as I do. Nobody can argue that when you are talking about kids and young people that these issues aren’t important. Well, probably some can, but hopefully a very small minority! [laughs]