24 Wednesday May 25 2022 | the times
News
Social media ‘fails young’
Matt Dathan Home Affairs EditorFour in ten children have tried and fail-
ed to get social media platforms to re-
move harmful content about them in
the past month, research by the child-
ren’s commissioner has found.
A survey of 2,000 children by Rachel
de Souza also found that half had seen
harmful content online in the same
period. She told MPs scrutinising the
legislation that will regulate the inter-net that the Online Safety Bill does not
go far enough to force firms to respond
to individual complaints from children.
De Souza said: “There’s this almost
medieval ‘bait-out’ practice of girls’
images being shared, right across plat-
forms. It’s horrendous and the tech
firms are not acting quickly enough to
get these down.” She also urged minis-
ters to toughen legislation on prevent-
ing social media platforms being used
as a back door for pornography.IN THE TIMES TOMORROW
DAVID SMITH
Why the
government
is in a bind over
the cost of living
MAIN PAPERBUSINESS
SPORT
MEET ENGLAND’S
BEST YOUNG
RUGBY PLAYER
Freddie Steward
interviewed
MAIN PAPERCOMMENT
James Marriott
We’re becoming perfectionist,
and it’s a problem
MAIN PAPERTHE TABLE
THE NEW AUSTERITY EATING
with a Michelin twist
PULLOUTCretaceous crime A conifer cone and a dragonfly were among 998 fossils dating back 100 million years that were illegally
extracted from Brazil and seized by customs in Normandy. Yesterday they were handed over to the Brazilian authorities
Elderly hit by fines in
pay-by-app car parks
Concerns have been raised about
elderly people being “digitally exclud-
ed” after a pensioner received a parking
fine because he was unable to pay elec-
tronically.
Scores of people have recounted
their own stories in response to Pete
Paphides, 52, the journalist, broadcast-
er and author, tweeting about his late
father’s struggle.
Paphides, who also spoke on BBC
Radio 4’s Toda y programme about the
problem, said that his father, Chris, 84,
was in Birmingham for a friend’s me-
morial service last month when he
found that the car park payment system
had changed. The only options were to
pay via an app or an automated pay-
ment line. He called his son in a panic.
“My dad was unsure what an app was
and his bank details were not on his
phone,” Paphides told The Times. “He
saw that there was a camera, he knew
that he would probably be liable for a
fine. He was anxious, it was playing on
his mind.”
Fearing that he would be late for the
service, his father parked anyway. He
asked his son to try to sort out the prob-
lem before a fine was issued. However,
Paphides said that he was only able to
fill in a form on a website to which he
received no response. After his father
died this month, he found letters saying
that a fine of £100 had been imposed
and had then risen to £170.Paphides, who is married to Caitlin
Moran, the Times columnist, said that
the parking company “didn’t believe
me” when he told them about his
father’s death and had referred the
matter to a debt recovery service.
Paphides described the huge re-
sponse to his account as “startling” but
added: “In a way I’m not that surprised
— these people just don’t have a voice.
The tragic thing is, a lot of them don’t
even expect to have a voice. They think
they have been forgotten and no one is
listening.”
Esther Rantzen, who founded The
Silver Line helpline for older people,
said the problem was among the rea-
sons why a minister for older people
was needed. It would mean that “these
40-year-olds who make these decisions
would be forced to look at life through
that lens”, she said.
Those responding to Paphides in-
cluded Jenny Pirks, who described her
father’s struggle to pay for parking at a
hospital where her mother was being
treated for cancer.
“My dad couldn’t understand the
parking payment process at the hospi-
tal and got fined,” she said.
Marie McQuade wrote about being
at a Marks & Spencer branch behind a
woman who asked for a loyalty card
and was told she would need “an app, a
camera for a QR code, and to apply on
her phone... Not inclusive”.
Older people need a champion to take on
the digital world, Thunderer, page 28Charlotte WaceJEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES