Politicians are reviewing whether Jersey needs specific legislation to protect children from online harm.

A scrutiny panel will examine what protection measures are in place and if they are keeping up with ever changing technology.

The Children, Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel launched a review into existing policies and safeguards, examining whether they are meeting Jersey's obligations under the UN Convention on Rights of a Child.

Chair Deputy Catherine Curtis has her suspicions the island is not compliant: 

"There is some legislation development like intimate image abuse and cyber stalking, and the telecommunications law regulates against threatening communications, but there is nothing specific in place to protect children from online harms. 

"Jersey adopted the UN Rights of Children which includes Article 3, stating the 'the best interests of the child must be a top priority in all decision and actions effecting the child.'

"My panel is concerned that this has not happened with considerations around online safety for children."

"There's growing evidence of the harm being done to children through cyber bullying, sexual exploitation, hate speech, and violent content, including inciting of self harm and suicide."

The panel is also expected to present a range of ways Jersey could do better for our children to the island's top politicians by the end of summer 2025. 

This is expected to be informed by a series of public hearings, as well as advice from children's services and teachers. 

Another push to improve protections in place for the island's children is coming from the NSPCC. 

Emma Motherwell, Jersey NSPCC Campaign Manager, says there needs to be a greater focus on tackling the growing rise of explicit image sharing amongst children: 

"The campaign that we're working on in Jersey is looking at self-generated image sharing because we have seen nationally there has been quite a disturbing twelve-fold increase in the volume of these kind of images.

"Really disturbingly, we've seen a massive increase in children aged 7 - 10 year old (involved in self-generated user sharing). There has been a 65% increase between 2022 and 2023 - so that's a huge increase."

Emma has this advice for parents and carers:

"One of the first things to do is to start having really regular conversations with your child about their online activity, as much as you do about their day at school. We can be quite guilty of only talking about online with our children when there's a problem or we have to confiscate a device for some reason.

"But having really regular chats about not only what they see as the positive elements of being online (and out children do see the positives more than we do as adults), but also then it becomes a regular conversation and you can start to understand what it is they want to be doing and how therefore, you can keep them safe as they start to explore online more independently as they get older."