Safety first

Child safety is naturally one of our priority areas, which explains why - in line with other operators - we adhere to voluntary codes of conduct that aim to protect children.

Across Europe, the youth market now accounts for 100 million mobile phones.*
The fasted-growing new group of phone users are children of 9-11 years.

Many parents want their children to carry mobile phones for their safety and security. Young people see the mobile phone as a way of life and an important way to stay in touch with friends.

We respect parents’ rights to weigh up the pros and cons of allowing their children to own or use mobile phones.

For that reason, we agreed in April 2006 to enable Disney to launch a new mobile phone service in the UK intended for parents and their children, but only after six months of extensive consultation with government, children’s charities, parents’ groups and health agencies.

Research shows that parents agree by three to one that the overall advantage of a child using a mobile phone outweighs the disadvantages. Our dialogue also revealed that children’s charities welcome inbuilt content controls for children using mobile services, such as those that this new agreement with Disney will provide. We aim to offer parents more control over the way children use mobile phones and we look forward to working together with Disney towards this goal.

“Many parents want to stay in touch with their children by mobile phone but worry about them running up high bills, downloading inappropriate content, and being safe. This is a highly innovative service [Disney] which will help both parents and children use mobile phones with greater confidence and help ensure more children and young people are kept safe.”

John Carr, Chairman of the UK's Children's Charities' Coalition on Internet safety

* Research carried out by Mobile Youth in 2005

For more information visit the following pages in our extensive online resource

Safety first

Issues in brief

O2 plc

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