It has to be in everyones best interest to make places such as Facebook as safe as possible for underage users. Photograph Alamy

Facebook is the latest and most high-profile website to grapple with the issue of child protection. Arguably, action is long overdue virtually every UK teenager uses social networking sites, and Ofcom research last month revealed that a quarter of internet users aged between eight and 12 have an underage social networking profile. For millions of children, the online world, which they visit and socialise on daily, is no different from the offline so surely it has to be in everyones best interest to make places such as Facebook as safe as possible. Ceop, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, has seen its calls for Facebook to adopt their “report abuse” button rejected. The button allows users to immediately report any abusive, threatening, worrying or wholly unacceptable content or behaviour to a range of experts, who can provide specialist help as necessary.

For me, the impact and importance of having the Ceop button on websites populated by young people is clear. Young people love Facebook, but they also have a right to be safe. If they do ever get into trouble online, they want two things first, to be able to report it to the website so it can take action, and second, to get help. Social networking sites can do the former but not the latter, and therefore need to work with organisations better placed to help their users around specific issues, such as cyberbullying. The Ceop button, already implemented by Bebo and MSN although haplessly small and ill-conceived in the case of Bebo, links directly to CyberMentors Beatbullyings online service provision for reported incidents of cyberbullying, and in the last month alone, weve been able to help over 500 young people whove been referred to us in this way. Safeguarding and protecting young people online.

Ultimately, the safety of young people has to be what we must all come back to and thats why we need to work with the big industry players, the Facebooks and the Googles of this world. Their safety centres must be easy to find from every page, they must refer to support services, while awareness-raising campaigns are used to drive the message home.

When YouTube agreed to host the CyberMentors advert on its front page, the socially responsible messaging was clear “We want you to be safe. We will do everything we can to keep you safe. But if you do ever get into trouble, heres where you can go for help.” And young people do need that help and support. For some, they will need it today, for others perhaps tomorrow or next week. Which is why, while social networking sites procrastinate on adopting the Ceop button, we still have a duty to work with them, to run awareness campaigns, to provide content and resources for their safety centres to have an integrated partnership.

However, the Facebook/Ceop debate only scratches the surface of the issue. Data protection, privacy and civil rights, confidentiality and issues of consent should all be examined if we are to set standards for the safeguarding of young people on social networking sites. These are the issues we have to tackle with CyberMentors, which is in itself a social networking site it provides young people who are being bullied or are dealing with a variety of wellbeing issues with real-time online mentoring from their peers and counselling from accredited counsellors. Its why we engaged with the Information Commissioners Office to approve our data protection protocols.

Think of the data we are holding. Imagine holding over 350,000 taped conversations of vulnerable young people, and as a matter of integrity, law and best-practice, be bound to protect them. These are private conversations which must be quarantined, privileged, safeguarded and if you care about privacy and civil rights, be subject to informed consent if you are to obtain, process and analyse the content. Now think of the data held by the big social networking sites, and question how they set out to safeguard; they can and they should protect data, privacy, and the identities and locations of their users, many of whom are under 18.

Child safety online goes beyond installing a reporting button or running an ad campaign. Its a great start, and an absolutely critical one, but the debate needs to be widened to include data protection and identifiability and if we are going to prioritise the safety of our children online, then its one we need to have now.