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Facebook has opted against adding a safety button on each user’s profile page, despite calls from a leading UK child protection agency, as it doesn’t believe it is an effective way to encourage children to report abuse.

Facebook refuses to add safety buttons claiming that they ‘confuse’ and ‘intimidate’ users.

Dr Search finds Facebook’s argument ridiculous. Every research we have conducted or read repeatedly shows that when buttons are compared to text links, the click through rates for buttons are far higher than text links in producing click throughs.

Facebook has resisted previous Government calls from the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, to add the CEOP panic button to its home page.

The social media company, which has had mounting pressure placed upon it from the UK Government and British parents, to amend its child safety strategy, sent its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, to meet with Jim Gamble, the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), to discuss Facebook’s security measures at a meeting in Washington DC.

After a lengthy four hour meeting Facebook executives refused to add a CEOP safety button to each user’s profile page, but did announce a raft of new safety measures which it believes will be more effective in protecting children’s safety online.

Instead of the button, UK users under the age of 19 will now be able to click on the ‘Report abuse’ link on each page and have the option to report the abuse directly to CEOP as well as to Facebook employees.

Jim Gamble has openly criticised Facebook, over the last six months, for not following the example of similar sites such as Bebo and failing to introduce a panic button on each user’s profile page – which is linked to CEOP’s site.

The button, a large graphic, provides quick access to 10 sources of help depending on the type of bullying. For instance, if a child has been bullied online but does not want to report it to the police, they will be directed to ChildLine. Users can also find details of their local police station or contact a CEOP officer for more advice.

CEOP says the button, which is also live on Microsoft’s MSN chat and several school websites, receives 10,000 clicks a month and has resulted in over 5,000 criminal investigations.

Gamble, revealed last week that British police officers have seen the number of complaints of alleged grooming and bullying on Facebook almost quadruple this year.

Moreover he disclosed that Facebook’s own safety ‘checkers’, who insist they have a secure internal system, had failed to report a single alleged paedophile to police themselves.

A total of 252 Facebook complaints were made to police in the past three months – at almost quadruple the rate of complaints last year, when 292 were received in 12 months. Gamble said that none of these complaints came directly from Facebook.

Facebook has resisted Government calls from the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, to add the panic button to each user’s profile page; instead opting until now to put a link to the CEOP homepage in the site’s Safety Centre.

The site has faced increasing pressure from parents such as the mother of Ashleigh Hall, who was murdered by Peter Chapman – a serial rapist who she met through Facebook. She attacked the company for failing to protect children from predatory adults who create false identities online.

Some argue that CEOP’s button doesn’t go far enough when keeping children safe online. Robert Marcus, director of Chat Moderators, a company which monitors branded social media activity, believes that all social networks need to be more proactive.