Woman's Hour - AI and child sexual abuse, Alex O’Brien, Molly Manning Walker

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

As the Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit starts at Bletchley Park today, we look at the growing issue of AI generated child sexual abuse imagery. Jessica Creighton speaks to Emma Hardy from the Internet Watch Foundation and to Professor Gina Neff, Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge University. Science writer and poker player Alex O’Brien explores how the game's rules and strategies could help us to navigate the world, in her new book The Truth Detective. She joins Jessica in the studio.A recent report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says that climate change is causing an existential threat to the health and wellbeing of all children. Their President Dr Camilla Kingdon tells Jessica why that is, and what can be done.How do you navigate sex and consent as a teenager? How To Have Sex is the debut feature film of director Molly Manning Walker. It follows three best friends on a hedonistic post-GCSE trip to a party resort in Greece. As they fill their days sunning, clubbing and drinking, they also deal with troubling first sexual encounters and wrestle with issues of consent. Molly joins Jess to discuss the inspiration behind the film. Presenter: Jessica Creighton Producer: Lottie Garton

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Jessica Crichton. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello, welcome to the programme. Now, how good are you at calling someone's bluff? One of my guests this morning is one of the best at it. She's written a book about her love of playing poker and how the game has helped her navigate real-life situations. And it got me thinking about the life skills that we've acquired from playing games. And now it could be from playing a card game like poker. It could be from a board game.

It could even be video games. What life skills have you learned from playing games? So for example, could it be teamwork from playing netball, word skills from Scrabble, even communication skills from charades? For someone like me, I've played football all my life and I've definitely learnt resilience. So when I've got kicked, I've dusted myself off and got back up again. It's a team sport, so I've learnt to interact with people, I've learned to interact with people. I've learned to socialize through playing football. And there's been an awful lot of learning about commitment and dedication, because even when it's pouring down with rain and it's dark

and it's gloomy and I have a training session looming, yes, I still go out and do the training, even if I don't want to. That is something that can definitely be replicated in real life situations. But let me know about your experiences and I'll read out some of your messages. You can text me on 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. WhatsApp me as well on 03700100444. On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour, and you can email us through our website. And maybe some of the skills that you've learned are similar to those learned by the science writer and poker player Alex O'Brien, who will join me later in the programme to talk about her new book. Also this morning, climate change is an existential threat to children.

That's a claim from one of the UK's most senior paediatricians. From young people being more vulnerable to extreme weather to increased rates of cancer. We'll discuss how the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is finding solutions. And also the issue of consent is something that we talk about quite often on Woman's Hour. Well, a new film which explores the complexities of consent is something that we talk about quite often on Woman's Hour. Well, a new film which explores the complexities of sex and consent amongst a group of teenage friends has reignited the need for a more nuanced approach when discussing this topic. The film's director will be with me in the studio a little bit later. But first this morning.

Today is the start of the Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit at Bletchley Park. It's the first of its kind in the world. The summit is being attended by politicians from 27 different countries and is looking primarily at safety. So for example, what threats AI poses and how to combat these. But at the Fringe Conference, there is an important topic on the agenda that isn't really being discussed an awful lot in the mainstream, but it is becoming more and more widespread. And that is the issue of AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery. The Internet Watch Foundation, or the IWF as they're known, has just released a report on child sexual abuse material, which it says threatens to overwhelm the Internet.

Emma Hardy is communications director at the IWF and tech expert. Professor Gina Gniff is director at the Mindaroo Center for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge University. Now, I spoke to them both earlier this morning and Emma told me about the type of material the IWF is looking to track down and remove, which many of you will find distressing. Child sexual abuse material shows a child and there might be another person accompanying the child, whether it's another child or an adult. That child is being engaged in some kind of sexual activity. There are categories of sexual activity in the UK we call them a b and c for short but actually what they entail is category a for example is penetrative sexual activity where that child is being penetrated in some way

it also involves sadism and it also includes sexual activity with animals. Category B is non-penetrative sexual activity. And then category C is anything, hopefully, that doesn't fall in categories A and B. But it's incredibly explicit imagery, sexual imagery of children that we find online. And how is it that the AI software is being used to generate this material? So what we've been tracking only over the past six to nine months, really, is how AI software is being abused. And I really want to put it in those terms. It's not created for this. But there are people and we've gone to just one dark web forum on the internet in September. And we found 20,000 images on that forum and this is a forum that's set up and dedicated to talking about and sharing child

sexual abuse material there were 20,000 AI generated images of children and of those when we performed an assessment around 3,000 of them would actually fail UK law. So that means they were sexual images of children, sexual abuse images of children. AI is trained on huge amounts of data sets. There are ways in which people are taking those models, those open source models that they can get and download for themselves, they're kind of bolting on other trained models that have been trained on child sexual abuse images. And then when they, I'm not going to explain how they do it because that's inappropriate,

but then when you put the right kind of commands into AI, it will generate an image and you can further refine that by tweaking what instructions you're giving it or by using editing software so ultimately somebody who has a sexual interest in children can create whatever their mind is picturing fantasy can become an image in front of their faces just so that we're clear Emma, these pictures are being generated completely from scratch, completely from artificial intelligence, or are they coming from real life sources as well? They're coming from both, actually. So ultimately, the AI models, we'll call them, the software, the original base model that somebody takes, that has been trained on huge amounts of of imagery it has to be um there's a question about what's in that training set that we often won't be able to answer

has there originally been images and videos of child sexual abuse it used to create that base model we don't necessarily know the answer to that but what we do know is people can refine it so people can take images of children they can take pornographic images of adults and you can put them in and tell train the model to understand what an explicit sexual image is and also what a child looks like and with the right kind of commands and prompts you can then generate child sexual abuse imagery. What we're also seeing is how images of real children are being harvested from the internet and fed into the training of these models that can refine the images. So you could end up with a child who has never been involved in sexual abuse suddenly appearing in an image where it appears that they are being sexually abused in a really explicit image.

What we're also seeing is how children who have been sexually abused and whose images are in a huge number on the Internet. I guess one thing you need to think about is that um people who are interested in sexually sexual images of children collect images so there are huge collections of children we call them sets those sets equally can be used to train ai models so you will get an existing known victim of child sexual abuse appearing in scenarios that he or she has never actually been in, but it will look like they're in that scenario. So again, it's that element of fantasy, what's in that person's mind, if they collect images of child A, but child A isn't seen, I don't know, in the woods or on the beach or wherever it might be, they can now be pictured in those scenarios or doing that particular activity that that person wants to

see them doing so real children's images can be used whether they've been sexually abused or not and they can be used to create child sexual abuse images okay the scope the scope for this um sounds incredible and so specific children can be targeted yep specific children can be targeted? Yeah, specific children can be targeted. We see this also in celebrities' images. So, you know, I guess everyone might have a favourite celebrity or two. What these models can also do is de-age people. So we've actually seen this with one of our government departments recently as a kind of really fun way of looking at AI.

They took the minister's pictures and they de-aged them to make them look like they were in high school. And then they put them out on the Internet. You know, it was quite funny to look at. But think about that through the minds of someone who has a sexual interest in children. Anyone who has enough images of themselves on the Internet can be fed into something like this and they can be de-aged. So we see celebrities being made to look younger and appearing in sexually abusive scenarios. We also see famous children who've been in films in sexual abuse scenarios as well when they haven't actually appeared in those in real life. But again, it's how and I'm going to say that

this technology is being abused. It wasn't set up to do this, but it can be used for this. It's how the technology is being abused to create what somebody has in their mind as their sexual fantasy. The scope for this sounds so, so broad. And you've already mentioned the fact that just in one month, 20,000 AI images were found, the figures of which you released in your report. Gina, I'd like to bring you in. Considering how many images are in circulation at the moment, does this mean that this AI software is easy to get hold of? Who's using it? Well, what we've seen is that the tools that are available are more available to more people. And in general, that's a really good thing. And what Emma has brought in and the amazing work the Internet Watch Foundation is doing is showing

how, you know, when we democratize AI tools, we also are democratizing the harms. And that's why we have to be really careful around working with platforms, working with law enforcement, working with civil society organizations like the Internet Watch Foundation and others to make sure we have the guardrails in place to keep people safe. Now, one of the things I wanted to mention is when Emma was talking, these AI notification tools, for example, are really common and they're most commonly targeted for women and children. So AI notification tools, but again, I don't need to tell listeners how to go and find them. You can find them now on the internet. And they can turn any picture of a woman or a child into, you know, an approximation, an AI approximation of what that person might look like new. And that's something that I think none of us truly want. We don't want to have a proliferation of these images

that can be used to attack and abuse and harm. It's a huge risk. It's a huge risk to our own personal safety. And it's the kind of issue that isn't, well, frankly, not on the table for talking about at the international summit that's underway today. Yeah, because this is an issue that's being talked about at the fringe conference, as I understand it, not the main summit itself. That's right. of the benefits of having an international summit here in the UK is that it is bringing so many people together to talk about what is the future of work, what is the future of safety in

our communities, what is the future of our democracies, you know, the kinds of issues that I think listeners really care about. I wonder as well, though, talking about it in the way that we are for this programme, it sheds light on an issue that perhaps we should be talking more about, but does it also exacerbate the problem as well? I don't think so. And I think talking is the best thing that we can do. We're not giving out an instruction manual. And in fact, if we come on to talk about potential solutions and laws, then I want to talk about instruction manuals.

But we're not, as IWF and as others, giving out an instruction manual, a recipe as to if you take this piece of software and add it to this and train it on that, then you get X. So we're not encouraging people. But actually, this needs to be talked about because it's happening now it's not a future you know will ai take over the world and our jobs and our lives kind of scenario this threat is happening right now so we need to talk about it and particularly in the family home and this is something one of our mantras at IWF is talking. If you talk in the family home little and often about

online safety in general, but specifically about sexual abuse threats to children, and you can choose your language carefully and appropriately according to the ages of your children, then it normalizes that conversation. It actually helps protect that child from harm, makes them more aware of what the risks are when they're out and they're, you know, surfing the Internet or doing whatever it is they're doing or clicking on links that someone has sent them. And it makes them better protected and more resilient. So talking about things like this is is really, really important. Little and often you don't have to do it at the dinner table face to face and make a big formal thing it's just oh what game are you playing what do you like about that game oh you know do you talk to people online what sort of things do you say making sure they're using like kind of names to call themselves when they're

in games and things and then you can gradually open up that conversation to take in more and more of those harms so talking is absolutely essential in my mind. Sorry, Gina, go. Oh, I was just going to say, and there are other things that we can do too, right? There's some basic personal cybersecurity work. Unfortunately, individuals are being asked by platforms and others to take on that responsibility of keeping them safe. And we need to work as citizens, as parents, as engaged humans, we need to work to make sure that our social media platforms are truly keeping us safe. And that was an enormous part of the work of the Online Safety Bill. But in our research that we did, one of my doctoral students looked at what she called feminist cyber security so what would

what would that cyber security look like if we put women's issues first and that opens up a whole host of things that might not seem important to the people who send out cyber security instruction manuals but are really important to people who are trying to keep their families safe so for example um the student julia slupska who now works for a great organization called glitch she interviewed counselors at the shelters for intimate partner violence and it was the counselors who were teaching and working with the clients coming into the shelters about what their cybersecurity practices should be. And one example was through an enormously popular game, Roblox. So dad was able to still contact the child through a very popular online video game because there were access and protocols it was never designed to be able to shut off a potential threat that was apparent so you

know I think that you know when Emma's talking about having these conversations it really is important that we have conversations about how our energies are being used, where our energies are stored, and again, who we interact with. But there's some element that Emma brings in from her work that I think should worry us all about how we need to be working to make sure that A, the tools are used in ways that are safe, and B, that our platforms are not places that are helping to share and perpetuate this information. Yeah, I think people are becoming more and more aware now of how they use their social media and the types of things that they upload to their social media

because you never know who is taking on that material. I have read though somewhere, there are counter arguments to talking about this. Some would say that this perhaps serves a purpose or provides an outlet for people who use AI generated sexual abuse material because it doesn't then affect real life children in the flesh. Emma, what would you say about that? The people using the AI generated imagery rather than going to real life children? Yes, we see this said a lot in forums on the dark web where people with a sexual interest in children are gathering, talking and sharing hints and tips. What if it was your child? I've also seen it, though, in mainstream articles. I wouldn't say it was just a fringe

kind of counter argument. It does seem to be out there in the mainstream. So let's think about this. What if it was your child that you'd uploaded your holiday snaps on social media and someone had taken the images of your child and had put it through an AI engine to nudify that child? That's now not your child. It's the AI's version of your child child but it looks a lot like your child it shares the likenesses how does that make you feel and what how might that child feel as they grow up knowing that their images are being looked at by people who are essentially getting their sexual

kicks from that also and i think this is really compelling. So there's an amazing organization in Finland, and the English translation of them is Protect Children. They put out a survey on the dark web, where people feel comfortable with responding because it's completely anonymous, and it's targeted at people who are using child sexual abuse material. And over half, 52% of the respondents on this survey, said that they felt that viewing child sexual abuse material might lead them to engage in sexual acts with a child in real life. So whether that is actually a real child or it's partially based on a real child's likeness, if that is an encouragement to people to want to, I feel the desire to actually go and harm a child, then that's something that we need to all be concerned with. I don't want to hear from people

that this is an ethical form of child sexual abuse just listen to those words watching children be raped whether that's a real child or a depiction of a real child that may have been trained on real children's images why as a society might we think that that's acceptable when we know that people who are viewing that, more than half of these respondents, it's fueling the desire to actually go and harm a real child. And UK law is really clear on this front. UK law doesn't make a distinction between a quote unquote real child and a quote unquote AI image, right? It is very clear that the depiction of children is the crime and not, you know, was a child actually used in modeling said crime.

And I think, so that's one point. I think the second is, you know, I just want to underscore what Emma says. When we talk about artificial intelligence, it's people all the way down. And it's real images of people being used to train these models, these generative AI models. It's real people who have poured through the data sets that, as she said, are the base model that make this work. So, you know, the idea that we could create a safe haven for crime, I don't think that's the right solution for making a safer Internet. Professor Gina Neff and Emma Hardy talking to me there.

And if you've been affected by anything that you've heard in that interview, there's a list of resources that can help you on our website. Now, we have got this statement from a government spokesperson. I'll just read that to you now. The AI Safety Summit will include a focused session on the impacts frontier AI

can have on society, including crime and online safety. AI generated child sex, sexual exploitation and abuse content is illegal regardless of whether it depicts a real child or not. The Online Safety Act will require companies to take proactive action in tackling all forms of online child sexual abuse, including grooming, live streaming, child sexual abuse material

and prohibited images of children or face huge fines. Now, thank you to everyone who has got in touch so far this morning. I asked you earlier about games that you might have played that have transferable skills to real life. And Roger has got in touch to say that myself and friends in our early teams played hours and hours of darts. There's no doubt that this helped us immensely with mental arithmetic. The repetition of having to add, multiply and subtract numbers quickly really enhanced the brain's ability to work with numbers. An example might be to add double 17 to 20 and five and then subtract the total from 180. Wow. It's got me confused already.

My next guest is already smiling at me because she is a poker player. Have you ever played poker? Do you think about how playing a game like poker or a board game or a sport could perhaps influence your life decisions? Well, I guess the thing in front of me is a science writer and poker player, Alex O'Brien. She's written a new book. It's called The Truth Detective, which explores how the game's rules and strategies help us to better navigate the world and make better choices. Good morning, Alex. Good morning, Jess. Really good to have you here live in front of me in the studio. Now, how does one go from being a science writer to a high

flying poker play? It sounds like quite a gear shift. Tell me how did that happen? Well, actually, through another friend who was a poker player, and I asked her to show me how to play and it literally blew my mind. Because, you know, contrary to popular culture, the game of poker is actually really, really cerebral. It's this multidimensional puzzle game. That's how I'd like to explain it. And I absolutely love it. And any strategic game I like to play and poker's always been this game that boys and men played and now I'm sitting here learning how to play it and thinking well this isn't that difficult

yeah that's how I got into it and then just studied it further and further and turns out I'm pretty good at it. Yes you are. Now were you attracted at all by the money the financial sums available that you can win when playing poker because you hear about these people winning hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds sometimes. There's big money in poker that's true but that wasn't my initial impetus It was more about winning or competing because I'm highly competitive. But also what was really attractive to me was that this was a very heavily male dominated game. And as a woman going into this field, proving not with words, with anything, just through skill that I deserve to sit at that table was

very very attractive to me yeah so it felt like an accomplishment absolutely and still does every single time now whilst you're coming at it from an angle of it teaching you about life and teaching you new skills there are a lot of people who I suppose get caught up in the darker side of playing a game like poker, someone that might have a gambling addiction, for example. How do you see that issue as a poker player? So, of course, anything can be addictive and can be taken to an extreme. What I'd like to say is poker has a lot of good benefits that come through playing the game. What it does teach you to for you to succeed in the game, it requires you to be self-disciplined and focused. Like in any, I mean, it's not very different to trading. A lot of traders become poker players, poker traders,

because there's a lot of overlaps there and similarities. But when you look at the new breed of poker players that come into the game, they treat it as a business. They have spreadsheets when they prepare to play online. They have bankroll management, capital allocation. They diversify their exposure. So they will swap percentages of each other. So there'll be a group of players that know each other's skill sets and they'll just take 10% of each other. So if they lose, but the other one

wins, then they get 10% of their winnings. So they sort of minimize their risk. And it's all about understanding risk. And I'd like to say that to that question. Yeah, I mean, understanding risk is definitely an important skill to learn for life in general, not just in a game. So you speak about poker having helped you in life. How? Tell us, what are the skills you need for poker that have helped you in life? How? Tell us, what are the skills you need for poker that have helped you in real life situations? You know, I'd like to answer that question as a woman. I'm a science writer and sort of analytical thinking and question skills are sort of embedded into my job description. But as a woman, you know, I didn't grow up climbing trees and roughing it out or taking or being encouraged to take risks.

I was sort of cocooned a little bit. So what it taught me was, again, self-discipline and focus, but also self-confidence. I'm fairly self-confident, but the confidence level as I have now got around money around finance around risk is a lot higher also fearlessness I feel that I have learned how to deal with this idea of uncertainty because as a society we've been conditioned to fear that what we do not know. And with playing poker, you learn how to quantify the uncertainty, the unknown. It has a number, and then you allocate a risk number to it. And you do that repeatedly.

And I think one of your listeners was writing in about the repetition of this and that is what poker does it repeatedly exposes you to taking risks making decisions around money and also what it also does it exposes you to failing. You know, the thing about poker is you can hold the best hand, a pocket pair of aces, and still lose. Because you have to make the best hand with the cards that fall on the board. So it teaches you that although you can make the right decisions, sometimes it won't work out. And you have to make make peace with the fact and how have you applied that to real life then give us a real life example I mean when it comes to money when it comes to trying to make decisions the right decision in the moment how have you applied that to real life um I think I'm a lot more zen about things um It's calmed you out a bit more? Yeah, because I'm not

result orientated anymore. You learn that you must consider, keep in mind that it's a process, that the road to success, success isn't a single

point in time or an event. It's a process and that is not a straight trajectory upwards. So yeah yeah it's more about the journey than the journey absolutely now i suppose i wonder if i'm the only one that thinks this but um when i think poker immediately i think of mostly men in quite a low-lit room, cigar smoke everywhere, male banter.

Is that what it's like? No. I mean, it can be. And that stereotype, that misperception exists. And when you go and play tournaments particularly, these are highly focused, highly determined players, especially at the higher end, high sex players. So now it's a sport. It's a mind sport.

It really challenges you in ways, in so many ways, in terms of emotional resilience, you know, strategic thinking. Yeah, it's that in the movies, but not in real life. And has being a woman in that male-dominated space been a detriment to your poker game? Or is it a benefit? Or is it somewhere in between, maybe? Somewhere in between.

I'm not going to lie. Misogyny and sexism still exist. Really? Is it quite in your face? Even though I'm fairly known known now in the poker world there's still the odd player that uh feels entitled to that space and does not like me at the table the way simply for because you're a woman because of my gender yes and then they what they will do though is they will um play really badly because they're so keen to beat me and I'll again poker also teaches you to be patient and I'll bide my time and then take every single chip they have

that is the best way to beat these men and that must be such a satisfying feeling it is and okay so you you've mentioned the negatives there of being quite male dominated, but still you have a daughter. Yes. Teaching her to play poker. Would you be OK with her going into that setting and becoming a player? Yes, absolutely. She's also a chess player. And at home we play a lot of board games, strategic games. Really? Do you have a TV? We do. We don't watch TVs. Really? So your main form of, I suppose, entertainment is?

Friday nights at your Brian household is get the board games out and then we get a takeaway and then we'll watch a movie together. Okay. But yes, I have taught her how to play purely because she's a girl. She's a little girl. And as any parent will tell you, our fear is, you know, we will never worry, stop worrying about them when they grow up. So I want to give her the tools, the skill sets she needs to battle it out in real life. And I want her to be fearless when it comes to, you know, decision taking, when she doesn't know what to do, when I'm not there to guide her. I want her to be absolutely confident pulling up any chair

at any table, forget the poker table, but boardroom, you know, the negotiation table, and sit down and know she needs to be there. She has a right to be there. And also strategic thinking, right? She is taught how to think ahead. Now chess does that to a degree, but what chess doesn't have is the uncertainty, the component of certainty. And life is a lot more like poker than it is like chess. What a wonderful set of skills for a child to learn, for anyone to learn. Alex O'Brien, thank you so much for coming into the studio. That was fantastic. The Truth Detective, A Poker Player's Guide to a Complex World. That book by Alex O'Brien is out tomorrow. And lots of you have got in touch about this subject in terms of learning skills from a game that are then transferable to real life.

Someone here has said, I've played chess all my adult life and now spend a lot of time teaching it to children. It has given me the capacity to plan ahead, keep emotional control and provided a completely absorbing mental outlet that keeps me thinking or worrying about anything else, however serious. Alice on Twitter has says, playing games independently with other kids of all ages gave me so much people skills, learning, resilience. Just one of the reasons we need to restore children's freedom to play out near home. Thank you to everyone for getting in touch. Please do continue. You can text, you can WhatsApp. You can use the social handles at BBC Women's Hour as well or email us through our website.

I'll try and get to some of your messages a bit later in the programme. Now, my next guest says that climate change is an existential threat to the health and wellbeing of all children. Dr Camilla Kingdom is the UK's most senior paediatrician as the President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health or the RCPCH. They're the membership body for more than 22,000 professionals in the UK and abroad. In a recent report detailing children and young people's first-hand experiences and understanding of climate change, the RCPCH say that the threat to children from climate change comes in many different forms, from young people being more vulnerable to extreme weather events, for example, the dirty air leading to increased rates of cancer, diabetes and obesity.

Dr. Kindam joins me now. Good morning. Good morning. Great to have you on Women's Hour. So the RCPCH says it's already seeing the impact of climate change on children's health. What does this look like exactly? What's happening to young people? Well, I suppose it would be good for me to just explain why children are particularly vulnerable to climate change. We think a lot about air pollution,

but of course climate change has a host of other impacts on children. But if you just think about a child, they breathe faster, they are therefore much more likely to be exposed to greater doses of air pollution. If you just imagine a child walking along a road, they're shorter, they're closer to the exhaust pipe of the car. Children also have immune systems that are not mature. And so actually, any form of toxin is more likely to have a lasting impact than if that happened to you and I. So we are absolutely seeing this in our clinical practice. We see it, for instance, in increased rates of stillbirth in women. We see it in increased rates of prematurity and babies being born smaller than they should be when they're born,

because we know that climate change has an impact on the fetus and on the pregnant woman. And then we see it in our emergency departments with children with asthma for instance that's poorly controlled not responding to our conventional therapies and and if you don't think about well I wonder does this child walk to school along a particularly busy highly polluted road actually that might be the kind of key question that you need to ask to kind of unlock understanding why this child keeps presenting with poorly controlled asthma. So yes, it's absolutely front and central to clinical practice all over the world, in fact. So you've described a wide range of issues there. So how do you go about helping these

young people? How difficult is the challenge in treating these health issues? So I think there are two ways of thinking about this. I think I've described some of the kind of physical manifestations of climate change on health, but I think what children and young people are telling us, of course, they're worried about their physical health, but they they're also really alive to the kind of mental health consequences of this. And there is an entity that we call eco distress. a kind of overwhelming or unmanageable feeling of fear, really, around the future, particularly in relation to the impact of climate change on the planet. And so I think it's about acknowledging that. And so when we're talking to children and young people, it's about gently asking those kind of questions, because actually the more we ask, the more we're realising that this is a significant issue for young people today. Yeah, it was only last year that the charity

Save the Children found that 70% of young people surveyed were worried about the world that they would inherit. What would this do to their mental development? So I, well, I think that's the really important question that we're all asking ourselves and and that's why we we are really kind of talking about this in a far more open way because i i don't think we fully understand the long-term impact on children's mental health you know we know that we've seen an extremely sharp rise in children's mental health problems in the round. The rise was starting before the pandemic, but the pandemic has certainly accelerated it. But I think the honest truth is we don't really understand the contribution of eco-anxiety and eco-distress on children's mental health. But I don't think it takes a lot of imagination to think that if we don't start talking about this and giving children a voice to articulate their concerns and then are listened to, that I think this is going to become a bigger and bigger problem.

We have spoken about this quite a lot on Women's Hour about climate change and how it specifically impacts young people and having spoken to them a lot of them will mention feeling that mental burnout that mental drain from constantly talking and thinking about climate change what what do they do how do they protect themselves so i think um when we spoke we did a large survey of we have a fabulous resource here at the royal college that's called RCPCH and us and that's literally hundreds of children young people who work with us and we asked them to undertake a piece of work so we've got this great group called the climate changers and they are 12 young people who led a piece of work to actually go out and talk to children around the country, look at the international literature, to really understand what children and young people

are really feeling about this, and crucially, what the solutions are. And I'm really proud of them. We've got a fantastic report that they've compiled. And there's some really simple solutions. It's about local government really protecting green space in our cities, that when we're building new homes, we really think about the ways in which we can make sure

that space is kept secure. And we think about ways of future-proofing housing. You know, we've got some of the worst housing stock in Western Europe. We know that damp and mould on walls is something that really is contributing to children's mental health problems and certainly their physical health problems. So do you mean, when you say spaces, are you talking about parks and green spaces in helping children's mental health, young people's mental health? Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, there's some fabulous examples, for instance, of wildlife trusts that are now specifically organising groups to take children out to kind of re-engage with

nature, help them understand that actually there are ways in which they can have some control over what's happening in their kind of physical environment. I think the biggest fear that children have got is that they are going to inherit this enormous problem because they see climate change accelerating and getting worse over time. But this lack of the ability to influence it in the here and now. And I think that's really contributing to their sort of sense of distress around climate change. And clearly, if we're talking about young people, we must also aim some of these solutions perhaps at the parents and the caregivers of those young people. How can they help? Well, I never forget a conversation I had with Rosamund Kissy-Debra, who is the mother of Ella Kissy-Debra, a little girl who died of air pollution in South London a few years ago.

And I always remember Rosamund saying to me, knowledge is power. And what she meant by that was if she had known that walking Ella to school along a polluted road was contributing to her severe asthma, she would have done something different. And that's really stuck with me. And so I think it's about giving parents and caregivers the knowledge to understand where there are things that they can do to try and mitigate the effects of climate change on their children's both physical and mental health. Yeah, that's someone that we've spoken to on Women's Hour. Now, the RCPCH has released its manifesto for the next general election, which focuses on better policymaking for children and young people. And as part of that, you're calling for there to be a minister for children and young people now we already have

david johnston who's the current minister for children families and well-being so how is your proposition different slightly different oh it's slightly different because i think what we what we've learned is that because children's well-being sits between health, education, the environment. You know, children's health and well-being straddle numerous government departments. Typically, their needs then fall between the cracks. And what we've learned across so many different topics, but particularly around health inequalities, and particularly when we're asking for children's health

to be invested in as a way of preventing disease later in life. Without that very specific focus that we believe a cabinet member, a cabinet member minister would have, I just don't think we're going to be able to reap the rewards that we believe we need as a nation in terms of shoring up the health of our whole population. Dr. Kamina Kindam, thank you for joining us on Woman's Hour this morning. I do have a statement here from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. They say the UK has already overperformed against our previous targets and we've cut emissions faster than any other G7 country. We will continue to meet our international commitments under the Paris Agreement while embracing the opportunities of clean industries and taking a more proportionate path

to ease the financial burden on British families. As I said earlier, this is a subject that we have spoken about many times before Women's Hour and will continue to discuss. Now, I must say thank you to everyone who has got in touch about playing certain games in their childhood or even in their adulthood that have transferred well to making decisions in real life. This one made me giggle. Someone has messaged in to say, dressing my Barbie doll as a child has helped me hone my personal style. Interesting. I'd love to know what your personal style is. Someone else has said, being deaf, board games are the one place where I can feel included and a participant

in life as it requires patience through taking turns and each person speaking in turn, all good skills for inclusivity. Thank you for getting in touch. Please continue. I might be able to read out a couple of more, might be able to squeeze a few more uh before the end of the program but first let me get to my next guest we're going to be talking about a film a coming of age film that has been praised for its nuanced approach to issues of sex and consent how to have sex is the debut film by the british director molly manning walker and it's already won an award at the Cannes Film Festival just a bit earlier this year. Now, it follows three best friends, Tara, Sky and Em, as they enjoy a post-GCSE trip to a party resort in Greece.

Now, in amongst the daily sunning, drinking, clubbing, they meet a couple of older boys called Paddy and Badger and find themselves navigating the complexities of first sexual encounters and consent. And Molly is here in the studio with me. Good morning. Good morning. Really good to have you with us. I've given a little bit of a synopsis of the film, but tell us more about it. Can you give us a sense of the plot, where the film is set? And actually, I think the setting of the film itself heavily informs the characters' behaviours. I know you don't want to give too much away, but give us an overview.

Yeah, it's about three young girls on a clubbing holiday. And it's about the pressure of sex on young people. And it's coming from all angles. So coming from female friendship, coming from men, coming from the naked towels in Malia, you know, the background stuff. So yeah, it's all about societal pressure on young people to have sex. It really is. I really, when I was watching, I did, I felt that pressure. I felt that pressure on the young girls to do something. There's even parts of the script where the character, one character says, I don't want to give too much away,

but I think it's important to note that that pressure comes insidiously almost. So one of the characters says, if you don't get laid on this holiday, you never will. And the other character responds by saying, I can't die a virgin. So it has to happen on this holiday. It has to happen now. What inspired you to write it? Why did you come at it in the way that you did from all these different angles?

Yeah, it's based on lots of experiences that I've gone through at that age. I was assaulted when I was 16 and I always felt like it sucked the air out the room and that you couldn't speak about it. And so I, yeah, I wanted to show that we can talk to our friends about it and be kinder to each other around these topics. But I also went on loads of those holidays growing up. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. And I'm glad that obviously this film maybe provided a bit of an outlet for you.

Why do you think there is this societal pressure on young girls to have sex or lose their virginity why is it seen as such a rite of passage yeah i think there's so much shame around the topic of sex and i think um so people like let's just get rid of it you know um whereas i think if there was more of a conversation around what is good sex what is female pleasure like how do we have good sex. Did you have those conversations when you were younger? Definitely not. No, neither did I.

They showed us, as in sex ed, they showed us a 45-minute video of someone giving birth. Wow. And I think that says a lot about what... the lack of education around the topic. It really does. And there's something specific about British teens in particular going abroad to lose their virginity or going abroad to have sex and hook up with someone.

Why is that a thing? Yeah, again, I think it comes back to the shame. I think we as a British society, we'd love to not talk about things. And I think if it was done on our home turf, it's sort of like we have to address them. But it's like run away and get rid of these things in other you know like get rid of the virginity in another country it felt like that when i was watching i felt like these three young girls that went abroad they were looking for a type of freedom that they haven't yet experienced when they were in the uk away from scheduled education structured i should, structured education away from perhaps their parents or their caregivers and that authority and away from British societal norms, which meant that they could be a bit more. What's the word exuberant in a country abroad? Is that what you wanted to do? Did you want to encapsulate that sense of freedom? Yeah, I guess it's an escapism, isn't it?

You like to go on these holidays. And some of these holidays are still the best memories of my life, but there's other complicated memories within them. So I really wanted to capture that. We had loads of fun, but we also... I bet. But we also went through lots of stuff together. Now, there is a darker side to this film, as I've hinted at already,

and that rolls around the topic of consent. There are sex scenes between the main character, Tara, one of the teenagers in the film, Paddy, as well, and between the two of them, it makes for quite uncomfortable viewing, as they do hook up but on the second occasion tara's verbal consent is absent or at least at the very least not convincing why did you do it in that manner yeah so um they're on the beach and it's important to me that consent isn't binary, you know.

It's like, it's about how someone's feeling. It's about what someone's going through rather than yes or no. If you ask someone and they say no, no, no, and then they finally say yes, that is also not consent. So I wanted to say that we've kind of looked at it in a really binary way for a long time as the wider society has yeah and that we should actually be looking at it in is someone having a good time is someone comfortable you know if i was talking to someone and they sort of like went insular and stopped talking and felt really uncomfortable you wouldn't carry on talking to them you'd be like are you okay but for some

reason in sex it doesn't seem to translate in that way why not i don't know i think you know we've i think we've learned how to have sex wrong i think that young men are told that they have to be powerful and strong we googled how to have sex the other day just trying to look for the film but what came up was a description of how to have sex and it said just thrust at the girl and wow that will that will give her pleasure and i think there's so much wrong information about what sex is for young for for young men how do we go about changing that i know you've done workshops you've gone out into into the wider public to talk about this film and the issue of consent and what came back yeah so um we did some

development um workshops about the script and we showed them the scene on the beach and we said what do you think of that does it look like consent to you and they said well you know it says here that she's really uncomfortable but she says yes so it's consent wow okay and i think so in people's minds when you were out in in the wider society it is yes or no it is binary yeah and um and that's really sad that someone can be so uncomfortable and yet we override it with well she said yes how did you want to depict tara uh the woman who this happens to you didn't want to I've read that you didn't want to portray her as just a victim. Yeah, I think victims in films often are, you know,

something bad happens and then that's it. Their life's ruined, they're meek, they can't speak up or like they're saved by a man often. And for me, I wanted to show show a resilient, bubbly, funny, like at some point it's annoying, but she's allowed to be annoying because she's huge, you know? And often the end of it has been criticised where it's like, oh, you know, she just runs off and screams and she's happy at the end.

But that's all of us. That's all of the women that you see who are bubbly and loud and you think, oh, they must not have anything going on in their life. But we're all carrying bits of trauma like this, you know, or to whatever degree that is. Yeah. Now, I mentioned that you won a prestigious award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Congratulations. Thank you. I know it's your debut and you were, is this right, throwing up for the first three days on set because you were that nervous? Yeah, I mean, so yeah, we shot all the party scenes for the first two weeks. So we had like 200 extras a day on set. Wow, that's a lot. And I didn't realise how hard that was. So I was really anxious at lunchtime. I was like sneaking off to throw up. Oh my goodness.

How did you get over that? I just, I don't know what I did, but I had a word with myself. I was like, either you're going to be really sick at the end of these six weeks or you're going to have a really great time. Because you might never get this opportunity to do it again. And we had a really great time. What's next? Oh, great question.

Just this for a while and desperately trying to write stuff, but want to make stuff that feels impactful in this world. And you play football as well. I do play football. You would have heard me say at the top of the program

that I also play football. Do you? Yeah. Where do you play? Well, in my back garden at the moment. I can't actually commit to a team because of work commitments, but you're a Chelsea fan.

Do you see yourself maybe moving into that sphere as well? Because your love of football, surely you'd want to go into that area, make a film. There's something bubbling. Oh, is there? What can you tell us? I don't know if I can tell you too much, but there's something bubbling in that space. Okay, that'll be really interesting. Is there any other issues or any other subject matter that really interests you? Yeah, I'm really interested in the climate change world.

Like, you know, it's sort of at some point I started writing something that felt post-apocalyptic and now it feels very current, not post-apocalyptic at all. So, yeah, that's brilliant. Well, I can't wait to see what you come out with next. it felt post-apocalyptic and now it feels very current, not post-apocalyptic at all. So, yeah. That's brilliant. Well, I can't wait to see what you come out with next. Congratulations on the award at the Cannes Film Festival. It's been brilliant to talk to you. Thank you for coming in.

Thanks so much. Molly Manning Walker, Molly Manning Walker, who's done that brilliant film, How to Have Sex. Much more from Woman's Hour coming up tomorrow. And that's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. The return of Doctor Who redacted. I think the blue box is our guardian angel. There's someone inside it, you know, keeping us all safe.

But where are they? The Doctor is missing. I repeat, the Doctor is missing. So it's down to three friends to save the world. But you don't need to hold my hand so tight. I'm not holding your hand. But can they save the Doctor? Doctor, no!

Get away, it's a trap! Subscribe to Doctor Who Redacted on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

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