The number of random and irrelevant posts on this quite short thread excellently illustrates the point I wanted to raise, which is that too many parents are really not very internet-savvy themselves. I was an early adopter of internet technology but it's not my professional area of expertise and 25+ years on, with teenagers, the idea that I would be capable of even knowing what they're seeing and doing online, still less able to police or prevent anything, is just laughable. They can out-tech me standing on their heads and with both hands tied behind their backs, and we all know it.
There's lots I can do, like discussing contentious issues with them and creating an environment at home where they know they can ask for help, but we all know that kind of approach doesn't always do the heavy lifting that you need or want it to do, and I can't control all the other social influences in their lives that might have an equal and opposite effect.
What I would like to see is free, readily available skills training for parents, perhaps delivered by schools or via local authorities, so that we could all get up to date with what our kids are likely to be into and up to, how to install checks and balances in our home computing set-up, what vulnerabilities tech crime looks to exploit etc, plus niche advice/training for people whose kids are using advanced tech, e.g. Linux set-ups etc. I see this training partly as being about tech skills, but also drawing on the skills base of police and child protection type agencies, and envisage that parents would need to update or refresh every year or two.
So my question is, what appetite is there in parliament for facilitating and funding this kind of training so that parents can play a knowledgeable role in protecting and preparing their kids for life online. I don't think you can leave it all up to schools, but the reality atm is that, for most of us, our kids are so much more knowledgeable that they're being left to police themselves...or not.