This week, AOL UK held its summer reception in the House of Commons and the theme was online social networking and the risks to children.

It is estimated that 61% of those aged between 13-17 in the UK have profiles on social networking sites. Worldwide bebo now has a staggering 25M members. Several people to whom I spoke had found that young relatives and friends had joined social networking sites and then claimed to be older than they were, shown an inappropriate picture, or given revealing details about their location or circumstances.

The first speaker was Karen Thomson, President of AOL Europe. She described the changes to the web which have been characterised as Web 2.0 whereby users are taking more control and generating more content. This is especially appealling to young people so “the challenges and risks are changing”.

The second speaker was John Carr, Secretary, Children’s Charities’ Coalition for Internet Safety. He likened the current concerns about social networking sites to anxiety several years ago about chat rooms and he explained that the Home Office Task Force on the Internet and Children has now established a working group to produce guidance on social networking sites.

The last speaker was Philip Graf, Deputy Chair of Ofcom and Chairman of the reguator’s Content Board. He quoted figures from the Ofcom research on media literacy to show that many Net users are concerned about offensive content, but he emphasized that Ofcom has no powers over Net content and does not seek such powrs. Instead he suggested that the responses to understandable concerns - especially where young people are involved - should involve self regulation, labelling, filtering, monitoring, and media literacy. He said that adults, especially, parents, need to become famiiliar with social networking sites and how they can be misused.