'Brick phones' among online child safety ideas

Campaigners from local and national organisations have made suggestions on ways Guernsey could protect children from accessing harmful content online.

The UK's Online Safety Act require websites containing pornographic content to have age verification checks, or they could face fines of up to £18m or 10% of the company's global revenue. Guernsey currently does not have similar procedures in place.

Suggestions included not letting children have internet-capable mobile phones, or two models of online access running simultaneously - a child-safe network and an adult network.

Guernsey's Committee for Home Affairs previously said it was reviewing the online safety bill.

Deputy Sally Rochester said: "I find it interesting with the online protection we provide our young people with, that it is not more of a conversation in our community here in Guernsey.

"Other countries have put in place substantial protection for children in terms of social media bans, age verification, all sorts of things."

Cyber security consultant Daniel Card said if similar online safety to the UK's were introduced in Guernsey, they could still be circumvented.

He said: "There are ways to get around this, from the vulnerabilities in the platform to the protocols themselves, through to using virtual private networks (VPNs)."

VPNs can disguise a user's location online, allowing them to use the internet as though they were in another country, possibly bypassing restrictions.

Emma Lawlor, a campaigner for Smartphone Free Childhood Guernsey, said she believed there were alternatives to age-verification checks.

She said: "We do not feel putting effort into age-restrictions, curfews or VPNs is really the way to go - with any of these things, enforcement is a massive issue.

"Just bring in a 'brick phone' [non-internet-capable mobile phone] policy - make it culturally more acceptable and change the whole thinking of kids going into Year 7, or even younger, needing a smartphone."

James Baker, free expression and platform manager at UK campaign group Open Rights, also stated there were benefits and drawbacks to age checks.

He said: "One of the downsides we have seen is in terms of people's privacy.

"If they hand their data over to a company, then the data can be at risk of being breached."

Baker also said Guernsey could use its smaller population size to its advantage.

He said: "If I was in charge of this, I would make sure every router ships with a child safe network on it and an adult network.

"There needs to be more advice to support parents.

"Somewhere like Guernsey, where you have a smaller, close-knit community, parental education is something you could really lead on."

Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk.