There is a lack of evidence that violence and pornographic images in the media harm children, a British psychologist told an Internet Advisory Board conference yesterday.
Dr Guy Cumberbatch, director of the Communications Research Group, regularly works with the Broadcasting Standards Commission and the British Board of Film Classification.
He said the new media of computer games and the internet had inherited the legacy of fears and anxieties that previously existed about the mass media. It was prudent to think that gross images of sex or violence would distort a child's development, he said, but this assumption was "rather lacking in evidence".
Dr Cumberbatch referred to one British survey of 35 child healthcare professionals. He said not one person was able to cite a case from their own records where a child was harmed by exposure to pornography.
"This is not to say that the professionals were unfamiliar with child abuse or with children who had been exposed to pornography. However, they could not think of cases where the pornography had caused harm," he said.
Dr Cumberbatch also referred to a Swedish psychologist who controversially carried out experiments allowing 7 to 11-year-olds to watch films with adult material. Two mothers who attended the viewing sessions needed psychiatric treatment for six months afterwards, he said, but none of the children were affected.
Asked if the damage to children might only become apparent at a later stage, he said studies had been carried out and the theory did not stand up to close scrutiny.
"I am not urging that less protection of children is needed," he said. "However, what must be challenged is the view that inappropriate images necessarily cause harm in themselves."
He said he had recently reviewed all the research literature on the effects of crime and violence in the media and had concluded that "much of the research is quite deceitful and simply does not show the harmful effects claimed".
He pointed to the case of the murder of the British toddler James Bulger. Reports still linked it with the horror film Child's Play 3 yet police had concluded there was no link.
He said there were limits to public acceptability but these could not be easily predetermined.
Ms Marie Murray, director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital in Fairview, said it was up to society to regulate itself and to tell service providers what was, or was not, acceptable.
She said links between violence in the media and the escalation in violence among teenagers might not be conclusively proven but almost half of children interviewed in one study said they believed that what they saw on videos was true to life.
Studies also found that those more attracted to aggression also tended to watch videos of more aggressive content.
The conference also heard from Ms Sinead Parker, director of strategy advisory services at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, that 30 per cent of households in western Europe would have broadband by 2008, compared with just 8 per cent in 2002.
