Dr Tanya Byron: Part Two

I very strongly support PEGI, and I was at pains yesterday to keep saying that, but I wanted the industry to hear me saying, I made this decision, it was a difficult decision to make. And it's a recommendation that I made on a narrow remit – the remit is child safety. But there are other considerations, and that's what the public consultation is for. I've said all that very clearly.

But what I've also said is that when I made the decision, I also made it because I really did not want PEGI to be substantially affected by any decision. Because I knew that if PEGI had no involvement in classifying games in the UK it could have a major impact on the existence of PEGI in Europe. I respect the work that PEGI does and the industry that set it up. It was about being above board and all the things that you said [in your question].

So for me it was really important that PEGI was involved, and the BBFC has accepted that. Fundamentally, PEGI will still rate 50 per cent of games releases, but BBFC logos will go on the front so consumers get it and understand it – [ignorance] is a big problem in terms of people buying these games.

That's quite a big thing for the BBFC to accept, so I felt really positive about that. I think in the UK - and I'm sure gamers will hugely disagree with me, but I'm thinking about parents and kids really - in the UK people who are stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide, the generational divide, they do want some idea of context. And I think detailed content descriptions with an idea of context are really important. And PEGI isn't about context, so that was one of things as well as the trusted logo.

I do think there are differences in the way the BBFC rates games. I did spend a lot of time looking at the ways that games are rated with both systems. I did feel that the way the games were rated was appropriate in terms of the question I was asked to consider, which is content in relation to children.

And I did look at the research. The research is highly contested, incredibly polarised. You've got the researchers in the States saying, yes, we can prove from studies that short-term affects on aggressive behaviour follow from playing these games, and therefore we can conclude they cause problems.

Then, in the UK and Europe, they take an ethnographic approach, saying, hold on a second, lab studies aren't the real world, and generalisations from short-terms effect to long-term effects are a pretty big stretch.

Where did I fit in with that? I sat back and thought, fundamentally, what you'd need to do to really answer this question, is take a load of kids at a really young age, stick them in front of loads of inappropriate games that are for adults and older kids, and let them play them over a sustained period of time, and controlling all other lifestyle factors, then seeing what happens. That's ludicrous, it's unethical, it should never happen. The methodology that is needed you just couldn't do.

The research around the interactivity... the jury is still out. But, I don't know whether you got through the psychology part of my report, where I talked about neuro-statistical learning in the mirror neuron system. There is very, very new research that looks at how children learn at a neural level. Children respond to actions, young children do. Action-related experiences can be important in the laying down, at a neural level, of the way we behave.

I didn't want to add to the speculation and the polarisation of the debate and then say, 'therefore it is really clear'. Because it isn't really clear, because we're just thinking about these different kinds of neural networks involved in learning, and I'm not going to jump the gun and say things that we don't know yet. But I think at a level of brain function, if you look at the way that children set their expectations of people's behaviour at the neural level, if you look at things like the mirror neuron system where action can actually have an impact on the way neural networks are set out, and that has an impact on behaviour.

And if you look at what we do know about child development that can't be refuted, that is the development of the frontal cortex, the part of the brain that in involved in physical evaluation, decision making, behaviour self-regulation, and the fact that in young children the neural networks are still connecting up, never mind connecting to other bits of the brain, and you put all that together... To me the most sensible and rational conclusion is, don't put something in front of a brain that at a neural level might be affected, and at a cortex level cannot differentiate and make decisions about that content in a way that's going to be helpful for them.

Now, we've always had this [issue] in the way that we have a classification system around film. So for me it's a no-brainer really. Let's just play it at that level, at the level children think and learn, and find a system supports the industry, supports the rights of adults so there are adult content games should they want them, but also really make sure that children are playing the games that do [help them].

I'm really enthusiastic about games, I play loads of them with my children, and I've also recommended to the government that they look at the education benefits of gaming, because it's a way of engaging children in learning. So for me it's about looking at what we know about child development and linking back in with what children are doing, rather than making great claims about the effects of games.

Responsible parenting, but it also boils down to responsible, clear classification and labelling - there are responsibilities for retailers and they need to be supportive of that. It's also for the industry about responsible marketing. I have made recommendations around the advertising of games and that needs to be thought about, and certainly in the online space there's a lot that needs to be sorted out.

So fundamentally let's say this: we've got all these new technologies that bring with them a new culture of responsibility for everybody, and I just hope that my recommendations allow people to work collaboratively, to respect each other's points of view, to reduce the anxiety and the polarisation of the debate, and get on with making sure that young people - and children have the right to enjoy these technologies - enjoy them in a way that's safe and appropriate for them.

I'm not going to say! I have a real blanket policy. Suffice to say it's probably the games that are popular in most households. I have talked about the fact we play Nintendo Wii with our kids, and we have all sorts of consoles in the house. And my husband and I, at the end of the day, quite like trying to play tennis on the Wii with our mates who've had a few drinks.

We like games in our house, videogames are fun, it's what children do. Kids need a balanced media diet, and they need, you know, not to be spending too much time gaming and not doing other things. But fundamentally, you need to celebrate it and empower and enable them to do it safely.

No, absolutely not! And it hasn't made me have any bad feelings about the games industry either. If anything it's reassured me that it's a really responsible industry that wants to do the right thing for kids and young people. And I hope that there's a commitment to see these recommendations through.

It's also about reassuring the adult gaming community that this isn't about stopping you doing what you're doing. You have a right to do what you do. In some ways actually I think the better we make it at the bottom end, the more people at the top end can just get on with enjoying what they enjoy, because there will be less anxiety about these issues.