Yesterday, Dr Tanya Byron emerged from six months of intensive research on children's use of the internet, to announce a package of measures, including clearer classification on video games, an awareness campaign and the setting up of a council for child internet safety.
Twelve hours earlier, she is sitting with me in a boardroom in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, looking tired but glamorous (“I'm 41 and I look about 106,” she says) and explaining how it came about. “It was a little surreal,” she admits. “My colleague rang me to say there had been an approach from Downing Street, and we thought it must be a hoax.
“But there I was, sitting in the back garden with the Prime Minister,” she says. “I met him the day that his eldest son was starting nursery and he spoke to me as a father, which was really lovely.
“There was a real personal feel to it. As a father of two young children, he recognised that this was a challenge. We talked a lot about it and, as a clinical psychologist who worked with kids, and as a mother of two children who use all these technologies, I thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Her feeling of unreality continued when her husband, Bruce, a.k.a, D.C. Terry Perkins in The Bill, was learning a script about online child exploitation. “He asked my advice, and I said, you deal with the fantasy, I'm dealing with the reality.”
I'm not sure whether it was the Prime Minister's idea to put Byron in charge of the review, but it was a stroke of genius. A plain-speaking parent, as well as a media-savvy clinical psychologist, bridging the gap between warring generations is her speciality, as any viewer of the BBC's House of Tiny Tearaways will know. “Parents feel fear, and maybe I can talk to them in a way they trust,” she says.
And her calm, measured approach has a soothing effect; I arrived determined that my toddlers would never touch a video game, and left wondering if we should get a PlayStation.
Headlines about the effects of computer games are almost always negative, but Byron believes in what she calls a “balanced media diet”. “Let children play their video games, but then have a meal as a family, read a book, maybe go out for a walk together,” she advises.
She feels there are plenty of positives about video games as long as they are age-appropriate. “Play is very important and this is one form that children are very engaged with,” she says. “People have this idea that all video games are violent, but 50 per cent of the market is aimed at under-12s. These are brain-training, nurturing pet games, quiz games and role-playing games that rely on your imagination. Children with learning difficulties have learnt to spell or count through their console.”
Yes, but surely it must be better for a child to be playing outside? Byron grins. “When I started, my son said to me, ‘you promise you won't ban video games, Mum, because my friends will hate me forever'. And the day I started it, he fell out of a tree and broke his arm...”
She has recommended that the Government conducts research into the educational value of such games - “you can engage children's imagination through this technology, so why not think creatively about how to educate them in ways they don't engage with traditionally?” And, she says, playing video games can actually bring a family closer.
At home, Byron often sits over the role-play computer game The Sims with her 12-year-old daughter, Lily - “I have fascinating conversations with her about relationships when we are playing these games.” Moreover, she feels they can be an excellent way to bring marginalised fathers into the parenting front line. “Fathers do tend to get involved in the technological side and they're more likely to be involved in setting up computer games,” she says. “My husband loves gaming and does it a lot with my son.”
And as a couple, the Byrons are partial to sociable games on the family Nintendo Wii. “We had friends round for dinner and we played mixed doubles, and I ended up punching my husband in the stomach by accident,” she recalls.
You sense that she is relieved that her six-month stint is over; once she has reported to a select committee, she plans to head off to a Center Parcs - “somewhere that my mobile doesn't work”.
She put a lot of work into the report. “Somebody who works in Government said the other day ‘you've changed the way reviews are done forever',” she says with pride.
“It's not going to be a 60-year-old judge who doesn't talk to anyone and sits down to write an academic review. I think if you're going to do a job, you do it properly, and if you are doing it about kids, you talk to kids.” She approached schools for advice and appeared on Newsround. More than 350 children, some as young as 5, responded to her call for evidence - “more than industry, charities, everyone else put together. What a lot of the kids are saying is, ‘we know more about this than our parents, so we don't have anywhere to go to ask for advice'. And some kids are saying, ‘because my parents don't know about this, they panic and stop me doing anything'.”
She also conducted 100 meetings with agencies, including police, children's charities and the industry, flew to the US to consult internet providers, listened in on focus groups and held a conference.
Consensus is what she's after. “What worked best when I was in child protection was not when someone came up with a fabulous new idea but when everyone worked together and respected each other's point of view,” she says.
So how best to protect children online? “It's not like watching television,” she says, “that's a regulated space. The internet is more like going out to play. It's amazing the experiences they can access, but more opportunity means more risk.”
Thankfully, she says, you don't have to be a computer geek to make sensible decisions about your child's internet use.
Her recommendations include keeping the computer in a family room, using a timer and laying down rules about the sites children may access. She says: “It's all common-sense. Just as you teach a child how to cross the road by holding his hand to begin with and then watching him do it on his own, you need to do the same online.” The idea is to teach children how to negotiate it safely, and put safeguards, such as content filters and timers, in place.
Good communication between parent and child, as always, is vital. With her own children, Byron adopts varying approaches. “I know my daughter will come to me if there are issues and, anyway, her internet use is more based around instant messaging. But we're much more prescriptive with my son about the amount of time he can go on, when, and he knows I can check on his internet history to see the sites he's been viewing. Now, I can be competent and confident about helping my kids. If managed well, the internet can be a really positive experience for a developing child. There are great benefits and opportunities; but parents should monitor it.”
Hers is a rare voice of reason in the debate between those who would like the internet closed down and those who view controls as censorship.
For Byron, both attitudes are naive. “The first isn't realistic - the genie's out of the bottle and there are really good things about the internet. And the second isn't good enough when it comes to child safety. That is at the heart of a developed society for me.”
