Internet safety project wins top award

The NI commissioner for children and young people, Nigel Williams, has received an international award for his work to keep children safe online.

Mr Williams is receiving an international award, the biennial Namur Award, for 'outstanding contribution with international impact to the awareness of social implications of information technology', at the Institut d’Informatique, Namur, Belgium.

“I am delighted to receive this award from such a prestigious international organisation,” he said. “And I am very pleased that I will be able to use the opportunity to highlight how the internet is becoming an everyday part of all our children’s lives.”

SPEECH

The commissioner will be delivering a lecture to the International Federation for Information Processing Working Group on Computers and Social Accountability.

The lecture will examine how children and adults use the internet in different ways, and is entitled “A Parallel Universe – Children and Young People’s Love Affair with the Internet.”

“Adults and children use the internet very differently, and we all need to be aware of those differences, not just to make sure that children and young people are safe online, but to make sure the internet can be something that allows them to explore new ways of communicating.

ONLINE THREAT

Recent UK research showed that 31% of young people had received unwanted sexual comments online, but only 7% of parents were aware this had happened (UK Children Go Online Project, LSE).

“The internet is somewhere children and young people are active, where they have access to information, where they have acceptance, where they can work in new ways, communicate in new ways, where there are risks and where there are opportunities.

“Adults work online in a very different way – and we need to be aware of the differences. I hope that this award and lecture is just one way that we can become more aware about each others ways of working online. This is an example of an area where we adults have much to learn from young people."

MORE

For more information on the work of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People visit www.niccy.org, where a copy of Mr Williams lecture will be available from 13 January, 2006.