Ministers welcomed progress to date in implementing the recommendations of the independent Let Children Be Children report by Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of Mothers’ Union – but said that industry still has plenty of work to do.
The Bailey review found that increasingly we live in a society full of sexualised imagery, where families don’t feel in control and children can’t be children. It said that parents are worried about their children being exposed to inappropriate material and that although families want to take responsibility, all too often they don’t know how.
The new measures include:
- Consulting on whether the current age rating system should be extended to cover more music DVDs and Blu-ray discs - to protect children from inappropriate material. Most are currently exempt from the Video Recordings Acts 1984 and 2010 as are sports, religious and educational products;
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Working with the music industry, online retailers and video services,
to have clear warnings on explicit videos where they are shown online.
Many online video services already do this, and by the end of the year,
YouTube will provide the music industry with the ability to label their
videos "explicit," giving parents a straightforward way of checking
whether they are going to be suitable for their children.
- Taking forward the final stage of legislation needed so that the planned new system of age classification and labelling for videogames giving clearer age ratings and advice for parents can start in July. The new system will extend the statutory backing to cover games rated PEGI 12 as well as to those rated 16 and 18; and
- Asking the Advertising Standards Authority to consider whether more should be done to spell out the commercial intent of ‘advergames’ to young people and their parents.
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