The current generation of social media users do not understand the emotional effects that their online activity can have on others, former Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton has said.
Skelton, who quit Twitter during the London Olympics in 2012, claiming she “didn’t have a thick skin” before later reactivating her account, said she had come to see the platform as a “necessary evil” but added that she believed future generations would not be so cruel.
Skelton’s comments came as official figures from the Ministry of Justice showed convictions for crimes under a law used to prosecute “trolls” have increased eight-fold in a decade.
Last year 1,209 people were found guilty of offences under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 - equivalent to three every day - compared with 143 in 2004. It is a crime under the Act to send “by means of a public electronic communications network” a message or other material that is “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”.
Speaking to the Guardian at the Hay festival, Skelton said she and her husband, rugby league player Richie Myler, have to encourage each other not to look at the comments made about them by Twitter users, but both admit they cannot resist.
“I think Twitter is a necessary evil now,” she said. “We have a rude saying in our house that I can’t repeat, about how only ‘certain people’ use Twitter.”
Skelton, who is about to have her first child, said she had less concern for the next generation of social media users. “I hope that my kids grow up realising what Twitter is, and what it is useful for, and that’s it.
“Our generation was amazed by it and didn’t really realise what it could do – and if you play with sharp knives you will cut yourself.
“I don’t think we realised the dangers: the danger that people will read everything said about them and that would affect them. We’re human. I say to my husband ‘don’t look at Twitter’, and he says it to me. But we do.”
Skelton has recently published her first children’s book, Amy Wild: Amazon Summer, about the travels of an adventurous heroine with her photographer aunt.
But as someone upset in the past by social media, and who enjoyed a “Famous Five-style childhood” on a farm, the TV presenter has a more sanguine approach to children’s use of new technology than might be expected.
Reprimanding children for being glued to screens is “old fashioned”, she said.
“There’s no point telling kids they can’t use iPads. They are going to, that’s the world we live in. I think it’s about embracing it in the right way. We should use technology to excite kids about the world, rather than as a way to stop them exploring it.”
“I think it’s old fashioned to say ‘kids just sit on their bottoms playing computer games’. It’s a very blinkered opinion to just think of it as bad. Some kids have different interests to the ones our grandparents had. That doesn’t mean they are better or worse.”
Skelton said she understood the concern of modern parents that children are not safe adventuring on their own, and said her own mother had kept the right balance of letting her children “off the leash” and keeping a close watch.
“My mum came on our adventures with us. If we went on a skateboard, she went on skateboard,” Skelton said. “She was always exploring with us. We were let off the leash and let loose, but they were never far away. Our mum would meet us after rafting on the river. You don’t have to be scared to let kids have adventures, and you can go along with them.”