Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have one amendment in this grouping and it is amendment is No. 27. Similarly to Deputy Shortall, my amendment seeks to change the age of digital consent from 13 years of age to 16 years of age.

As we are all aware, under the GDPR each country is given leeway as to what age it wishes to set the digital age of consent. Let us remember that it can be between 13 years and 16 years. There are arguments on both sides. Fianna Fáil has come down, on balance, in favour of setting the digital age of consent at 16 years. I shall give an overview as to the party's thinking on the matter. Obviously the Internet provides children with very many great benefits. It provides them with benefits in terms of their ability to access information. Even by using applications, or apps, it provides great advantages to children and helps them to keep in touch with groups such as football teams and allows them to co-ordinate their communication online. It is very beneficial.

The Internet also has very negative consequences such as children obsessively using the Internet and mobile phones. These are issues that go beyond the parameters of what is contained within the Bill that is before this committee today. We must recognise the fact that children are growing up exposed to levels of intrusion and information that none of us here was exposed to when we were growing up. There is a huge responsibility on parents when it comes to their children accessing information on the Internet and their use of social media apps. There is also a responsibility on legislators. We can play some role in respect of that and the digital age of consent in this legislation.

The premise from which we need to start is that generally in law a child cannot enter a contract until he or she reaches the age of 18, which is the age at which he or she is no longer a child. In certain instances children can enter a contract such as to purchase life's necessities, buy food in shops and similar issues. In general, the principal is that children cannot enter into contracts until they are 18 years of age.

Section 30 refers to what age children can consent to giving access to their data. The view of Fianna Fáil is that 13 years of age is too young and the age of consent should be increased to 16 years of age. The reason is that we want to ensure that children are protected from data profiling and commercial targeting. What happens, as we can now see from our increased knowledge of large social media companies, is that individuals are commodified into groups and that information then becomes something which is marketable. An individual is not marketable but an individual who is part of a larger group is a commodity because that group is a commodity and, therefore, can be used for the purpose of generating commercial gain for that social media company.

Fianna Fáil believes that we should put further obligations on the social media companies to ensure that when children consent that there is an understanding as to what they are consenting to. It is difficult for children of 13 years of age to recognise the extent to which they are consenting.

One of the problems with people's interaction with social media, and social media apps online, is that sometimes when one first joins one's status is frozen from that time onwards. So a person joins at a young naive age and he or she may have particular interests or objectives in terms of online searches. That information can sometimes be frozen within a social media company and the child is presented as somebody who is always of these views.

One of the biggest dangers we have from social media in general is the threat it poses to individualism. As I said in the Dáil about two weeks ago, the objective of social media is to put people into groups and then people think that they must think in accordance with what their group believes as opposed to what their individual thoughts are. Sometimes people have different views in respect of people with whom they have similar thoughts on other matters. Unfortunately, the weakness of this commodification of individuals into groups is that there is a tendency to merge people into groups thus generating groupthink. I also think this practice is anti-intellectual in the long run.

I am sure members will legitimately turn around and say that Deputy O'Callaghan was a member of this committee, as was Deputy Ó Caoláin, that produced a pre-legislative report on the Data Protection Bill, which raised without demur or objection that the digital age of consent should be set at 13 years. That is correct, we did do that.

When I am dealing with issues on a committee basis, I am not running back up to the fourth floor to the Fianna Fáil offices to find out the Fianna Fáil view on this. Deputy Chambers and I are Fianna Fáil Deputies but we are working as part of the committee. At a meeting of the Fianna Fáil Front Bench we had a very thorough and detailed engagement on this issue and there is genuine concern that not enough is being done to protect children who are accessing information online. It was thought that the least we could do is to try to put more of the obligation on social media companies as opposed to on the parents and on the individual child and set the digital age of consent at 16 years. For that reason, I will be pressing amendment No. 27.