Perhaps it was only a matter of time before the sickening spate of teenage gun murders would lead to talk of a crackdown on computer games and the internet. After all, it is probably easier to do that than, say, restrict the flow of guns, end the poverty of aspiration in some inner-city communities and improve moral education. With politicians of all hues voicing concern about some of the gangland videos that can be found on YouTube, it was hardly surprising that Gordon Brown and his acolyte Ed Balls felt moved to action, appointing Tanya Byron, the TV parenting guru and Times columnist, to protect children from “harmful material”.

Good politics, though, does not necessarily make for good regulation. Or good business. But one of the surprises of Mr Brown’s tenure at No 10 has been his willingness to play the role of Culture Secretary, killing off supercasinos, looking again at 24-hour drinking and now encouraging a review of media regulation via the Department of Children. Maybe this latest review is underpinned by carefully considered analysis, but do not bet on it.

Dr Byron’s original remit was to cover broader ground – advertising and the television watershed – but the Downing Street statement on the internet got rewritten to take out those references a day later. One might charitably describe that as a “fast-developing” area of policy that ministers are making up as they go along.

Dr Byron is in “listening mode” and has gone to ground, so who knows what might result? On April 19, after the Virginia Tech massacre, here is what she said about Hollywood movies and computer games: “There is a macho gun culture in Hollywood – the hero in the blood-soaked vest taking everybody down. It desensitises a lot of young people to violence. For the very vulnerable it gives them a platform, a licence to express their extreme and deviant behaviour.” So there can be no question that the result of the review has been prejudged.

It is easy to complain about the wildly successful game Grand Theft Auto, but why doesn’t the Government review include violence in films (you could argue that Hot Fuzz – rating 15 – glamorises gun culture in its comic way) or books? After all, The Iliad, the classic epic poem by Homer, is graphic in its description of violence, and it does without a ratings certificate. Nobody seems to be too outraged by Penguin’s lax approach. Books are art, of course, and films are made by powerful global corporations, so it is much easier to focus on computer games – because people over 35 do not understand them.

Of course, the video game regulatory system is completely broken. Games are rated, as are films, and between 1 per cent and 2 per cent of titles carry an “18” certificate. And in a sign that – incredibly – the current approach can work, the BBFC, the body that does all the ratings, banned one game, Manhunt 2, this year (although the same organisation seems more generous when it comes to letting through some cheap horror flicks).

All that needs to happen is that shops stick to the rating system when they sell games, and parents need to understand what children are buying. There is not much conclusive evidence that a quick hour spent on a first-person-shooter game, while both parents are out working to pay off the mortgage, leads to a rampage around town the next day. Indeed, it is arguable that the complexity of many games is intellectually stimulating, and, in a world in which screen-based jobs dominate, probably as good a training for the workplace as football.

The internet is more complicated. In her column for this newspaper on September 11, 2006, Dr Byron said that she had “concerns about internet pornography and did not see it as the modern version of a softcore pornography magazine under the bed. Internet access to children should be monitored. Pornography sites can be very unsettling and aggressive, with hardcore sites being able to be accessed very easily and inadvertently.” It is hard not to sympathise with that. The problem is what you do about it.

Google, the owner of the market-leading YouTube, does not have much of a ratings system there. There is some 18-only material, and you can notify the site if there is inappropriate content online. But in an era in which celebrities caught on film having sex seems to be a smart career move, it is hard to see how production can be managed easily.

The best that can happen is that websites use their own ratings systems online. Equally amazingly, many adult sites do that already, signing up to the Internet Content Rating Association, which also supplies a free browser filter to help parents, at www.icra.org. Indeed, when Dr Byron detailed her concerns about the internet a year ago, she simply advised that adults use filter software and monitor how their children use the net. That, at least, seems like sound advice.

There is a problem with children, gangs and guns. There is not any clear evidence that there is a problem with children, computer games and the internet. To assume that tough action on the latter can help with the former is an insult to parents. But never mind – Lara Croft and her fellow games characters do not get to vote. At least, not yet.

dan.sabbagh@thetimes.co.uk

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