ERICA comments on EU Council of Ministers’ discussion (1 March 2002) on the protection of young people in relation to video and computer games

ERICA welcomes the fact that the EU Council is addressing the question of protecting young people in relation to certain video and computer games. The easy access for young children to violent, racist and other disturbing "adult only" material is a serious and growing problem, particularly in relation to the Internet where it is more difficult to control children's access to such content. Via the Internet children can access violent computer games, racist material and videos without their parents' knowledge.

There is now a substantial amount of research which concludes that children are adversely affected by violence in the media, in relation to aggressiveness, desensitisation and fearfulness. Interactive computer games are likely to have a particularly powerful effect.

In November last year, ERICA published the results of a survey of children about their use of the Internet. 75% of the children survey believed that young children should be protected from violence on the Internet and around 40% of all the children surveyed had come across violence themselves. Furthermore, around 10% of those surveyed said they had accessed premium lines through the Internet. Premium lines are sometimes used to charge for entertainment, such as computer games. Charging in this way makes games more easily accessible to children without parental supervision because they do not need an adult to authorise use of their credit card.

In order to prevent easy access of young people to harmful material, the promotion of labelling, filtering and rating systems is very important. In relation to the Internet, ERICA particuarly wants to see violent and other "adult only" games and material and downloads charged to premium lines made available only on a proven order from an adult. There should also be no free promotional downloads of such material.

ERICA wants to see a common and effective rating system which is widely applied. On the Internet, the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is in the process of developing an international voluntary self-rating system which provides Internet users world wide with the choice to limit access to content they consider harmful, especially to children. However, until enough Internet sites are rated, including harmless sites, filtering systems designed to protect children by blocking harmful material cannot be effective. The Economic and Social Committee has called for a general duty on ISPs to protect children on line, which would give more force to such codes and voluntary systems. ERICA fully supports the Committee in its demand.