At the start of this week, Facebook UK fan-fared what many critics believe to be the long overdue arrival of a downloadable ‘panic button’ targeted at 13-18 year olds. The app, known as the ClickCeop button, is provided by Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre – an organisation that up until this announcement was one of Facebook’s sternest critics.

Teenage Facebook users are being encouraged to download the app and then if they suspect that they are the target of unwanted online attention they can click the ClickCeop button and will be redirected to another online facility that enables the incident to be reported.

The initiative received widespread media attention including interviews with hand-wringing Facebook executives on major broadcast news programmes and largely positive write-ups in the national press. Monday was pretty far from a slow news day too, coming, as it did, hot on the heels of the Raoul Moat saga and the World Cup final.

The ClickCeop button is being supported by the Ceop Facebook page which links subjects that teenagers enjoy alongside links to questions about online safety. It sounds, for all the world, like a well-meaning church group and it is probably about as appealing to the average teen.

The media, with its polarised vision of society, can’t quite position teenagers. They’re either knife wielding hoodie-clad maniacs or the innocent victims of an underground army of sinister perverts. The things is, criticising the ClickCeop announcement, bearing in mind the potential seriousness of the dangers that the ClickCeop button is attempting to address, seems somehow wrong.

Unfortunately, the ClickCeop button will be about as effective in its purpose as Paul Gascoigne’s well meant attempt to talk Raoul Moat into handing himself to the authorities with the offer of lager and fried chicken. Still, Moat seems to have become something of a folk legend and all around local hero – not bad PR considering his actions and deeds.

Facebook, like the ISPs, has distanced itself from attempting to police its service. The popular social media site, like all social media and online sites, faces a number of wide-ranging challenges, not least of which is that there is absolutely no way it can (with its present sign-up procedure) police who uses its services.

There is a notional age limit of 13 for Facebook admission. However, the means of regulating users is left down to the subscribers entering their date of birth. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that kids will lie about their age to become Facebook members. And, it won’t be just kids that lie about their age either. That’s the thing with the people who use the internet inappropriately. They aren’t, generally speaking, upfront with their targets.

The ClickCeop button is more likely to become Facebook’s de facto means of snitchery, finger pointing and witch hunting as kids (and adults) seek to manipulate the service to suit their inappropriate needs. That teachers and youth group workers are better off not being online ‘friends’ with the kids they’re trying to help is a pretty sad indictment of the times we live in.

What’s more, it’s not as though children who thought themselves potential victims didn’t already have a means of reporting possible ill-deeds. That said, if you search for the police on Facebook you’ll be redirected to a page dedicated to the 80s pop group. Which, at the time of writing, has 615,779 more people who ‘like’ it than the Ceop’s page.

Still, here we are four days after the ClickCeop announcement and a quick Google news search reveals that the story was covered by over 700 online news sources. That’s pretty impressive coverage for Facebook considering it didn’t create the app and that an app that doesn’t really stand a chance of succeeding in its mission. It’s also great news for Facebook which the day after the ClickCeop announcement went public with yet another legal dispute over its own IP.

In addition, it is also a fantastic example of social media turning to traditional media in order to promote its wares!

Sean Jackson, Account Director