Shortly before she published a report last week on keeping children safe in the online age, Dr Tanya Byron was invited to lunch with Gordon Brown at Chequers. It was a family affair: Byron, her husband Bruce, who plays DC Terry Perkins in The Bill, and their two children, Lily, 12, and Jack, 10, all went along.

Lunch at the prime minister’s country estate is the sort of occasion when any parent would want their little ones to be bright, presentable and on their best behaviour. But not even Byron, a child psychologist who has advised millions on parenting through her television series, is immune from modest rebellion.

“My son piped up just before we were going and he said, ‘Mummy, I could take my PlayStation and I could really make you scared in front of the prime minister’.”

He could. The prospect of son Jack smuggling in some dodgy game and whipping out his portable PlayStation to blast away in front of the prime minister had Byron “feeling slightly twitchy”. That’s not surprising given that she was about to advise Brown on how to protect young children from unsuitable computer material. But in typical calm style she simply said: “No, darling. You don’t play those games, so let’s not go there.”

A tall, curvaceous woman with wide eyes and a warm smile, Byron must be as annoying as hell to all those postfeministas who say you can’t have it all. She is clever, articulate, attractive and a natural performer, as well as being a mother and government adviser.

Although most people know her from television programmes such as Little Angels and The House of Tiny Tearaways, she is no pop-psycho with more beauty than brains. She did her first degree at York, a masters at University College London and a doctorate at University College hospital and Surrey University.

For 18 years she worked in the National Health Service, rising to be a consultant for children with severe mental disorders. She still works one day a week as a consultant in child mental health, although most of her time is taken up filming with the BBC.

Glamour, fame, acclaim – yet Byron, 41, also retains the common sense of an ordinary mum: making her the perfect candidate for a report into children growing up in a world where the risks, as well as benefits, of the internet and computer games are all-pervasive.

“When I came to doing the report . . . concerns were very much fuelled by a lack of understanding of the technology. People were asking, is it all big, bad and scary out there? I know a lot more than I did six months ago. It’s made me feel more positive and confident and less anxious.”

Of course she recognises the dangers – from paedophiles to porn, violence and cyberbullying. In her report, which arrived with much ministerial fanfare last week, she carefully examines the scientific evidence about how children are affected by nasty computer games or hardcore porn. Research, she concludes, shows mixed results.

Although, for example, there is a correlation between aggression and playing violent computer games, it’s not clear that there is a causal relationship – that violent games make children more violent. Convenient, since any kind of ban would be a political minefield. In person, though, she is more forthright. “I’m really clear that adult content is harmful and inappropriate for young children particularly,” she says. “They do not have the neural networks in place to be able to critically evaluate the content, to differentiate fantasy from reality.”

Byron would like the law on such matters to be clearer and to be applied with more vigour: “I am saying clarify the law . . . be clear about when there is content on websites that is breaking the law.”

She also encourages parents to challenge the classification of computer games if they think they are inappropriate: “It’s important to have a system where there can be a challenge, where people can complain.”

A less astute person might have let such conclusions suck them into recommending censorship of violent games or websites. Byron knows that won’t work: “If you go down the censorship route, the content would still be there somewhere. Children would go online to websites outside the UK, to unmoderated sites.” And parents, already struggling to keep up, might have even less idea what their youngsters are doing.

“The rapid pace at which new media are evolving has left adults and children stranded either side of a generational digital divide,” she says. Older people may still regard the internet as a parallel universe that somehow arrives through a machine at the office or home, but for youngsters it’s a seamless part of their lives. They are the cyborg generation.

The answer, Byron believes, is to trust in the better side of human nature. Families can navigate the risks provided they are informed and sensible. “I’m more of a ‘half-full’ girl than a ‘half-empty’ girl. That’s how I like to live life,” she explains.

Her report, which runs to more than 200 pages, is packed with recommendations some of which the government has promised to adopt. Key measures include a UK council on child internet safety to develop voluntary codes of practice for the industry and better information for the public; teaching adults about “parental control” systems on computers; a new classification of computer games like those used for films; and courses in schools to teach children “e-safety”.

It’s hard to argue against any of it (although whether the portly public sector needs yet another quango is debatable). Byron, using common sense, already regulates her children’s use of computers: “They don’t have a computer in their own rooms. We have got some in the office and one downstairs in the kitchen. Gaming and going online is good . . . but in a way that is right for their age and stage of development. It’s something you do after your homework. It never takes place instead of a family meal. When my son is gaming and I’m cooking, he’s there and I know what he’s doing.”

Her daughter, two years older, is given more leeway and Byron admits that she does not know exactly what her daughter does online: “We have a good relationship and I respect her privacy. In the same way I don’t know entirely what’s in her diary. But I know my child; I know when something has upset them or when they are distressed.”

They talk, they work it out, just as they would some other problem.

That, in a nutshell, is how Byron believes parents should approach bringing up children in the digital age. You can buy software to block websites, you can spy on children’s internet history, you can restrict access when they are young – but in the end children are going to go out into the big wide world and need to be able to look after themselves.

“We live in a risk-averse culture, but risk is a developmental imperative of childhood and I think we need to recognise that. It’s about fostering the independent child. What I want to get across is that [dealing with the online world] is similar to how we would parent children in the offline world.”

That old world has its own temptations, for adults as well as children. It’s clear that Byron enjoys the cameras and corridors of power: “I really like advising politicians. I really liked saying to the PM this morning, ‘The UK child internet safety council, you set it up, we could take a global lead, what do you reckon?’ And he says, ‘Okay’.”

Is she going to be on the internet safety council? “Oh no,” she laughs. “I’m outta here. It’s all about kids for me. I’d much rather work on behalf of children.” So she doesn’t want to be a politician? She gives that big disarming smile again: “Do you know, I really like advising them . . .”

She has already become too much of a politician to say no.

For more on this issue read our Alpha Mummy blog

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