Ms Alex Cooney:

I am the CEO of CyberSafeIreland and I would like to thank the Chair, Deputy O'Loughlin, and the committee members for the invitation to speak today. To give the committee some background on our work, CyberSafeIreland is the Irish children’s charity for online safety. Our focus is on equipping children aged between eight and 13 with the skills to manage their online experiences in a safe, positive and successful manner. We do this primarily through the delivery of educational programmes in primary schools, but also through raising awareness among parents and teachers as well as the wider public. We have spoken to almost 12,000 children aged between eight and 13 since 2016. I am therefore speaking today from the perspective of online safety for children. We believe that an updated curriculum must endeavour to equip young people with the skills that they will need to safely navigate through their lives, both online and offline. According to Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, education should prepare children for responsible life in a free society and in the modern world this must reflect what children are exposed to in the online world as well as how this exposure affects their development.

Children are accessing the online world at an ever younger age without appropriate guidance, monitoring and support, making them vulnerable to a range of online risks, which I will outline further. Based on our own survey of 4,000 children aged between eight and 13 to whom we have spoken to since September last year, 67% of them own a smartphone and 72% are using social media and messaging services, such as Snapchat, WhatsApp and Instagram. This data serves as a reminder that the majority of children in Ireland are embracing technology and that they are doing so from a young age. While the online world undoubtedly offers opportunities to children to access information, this increased exposure brings with it increased risk, including loss of privacy and personal data, exposure to inappropriate material, cyberbullying, online grooming, extortion and negative impacts on their health and well-being.

I would like to consider for a moment exposure to inappropriate content. Some 32% of the children we have surveyed and 52% of the boys overall are playing adult rated games. These games, such as Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty, are designated for 18 years and older as a result of, for instance, sexual and-or violent content of a more extreme nature. In our earlier submission, we highlighted findings from the same survey my colleague referenced, namely, the NSPCC 2016 survey that examined children’s exposure to porn. It found that 53% of 11 to 16 year olds have seen explicit material online, the vast majority of whom have seen it by the age of 14. Most of the boys who had viewed pornography online thought it was realistic. While we do not yet know how such exposure is going to impact children over the longer term, I think it is fundamental that we start to address these issues in an appropriate way and ensure that they are not learning about important topics such as consent or respect in relationships from online pornography.

Our focus is primarily on children aged between eight and 13. As such, we do not come across regular incidents of children sharing explicit images or videos, that is, sexting, although it is often a topic that concerns parents to whom we speak. We are aware, however, that it is a much greater issue among older teens in Ireland. Children should be educated on the risks related to inappropriate sharing of explicit images or videos and specifically on consent issues relating to online sharing of another’s images or videos.

While there is no doubt that parents play a crucial role in both protecting and empowering children in regard to online safety, schools also have a fundamental role to play. In our experience, parents need a lot of support as many are struggling to manage their children’s online use and to set parameters around it. Parents and schools need balanced and sensible guidance on how to minimise risk while encouraging positive uses of digital media. It is critical that every child gets the opportunity to get consistent information and to have well informed and balanced discussions on important issues like consent, sexuality and what healthy relationships look like and the school curriculum offers that opportunity. This is particularly important given that parents often have very different approaches to discussing these issues at home and some parents will avoid having awkward or difficult conversations.

Children are learning how to use technology in schools in a much more consistent way since the roll-out of the digital strategy for schools in 2015 and this is welcome since technology will play such an important part in their futures. However, this education will need to extend beyond the teaching of practical skills of computer literacy to include a much broader focus on digital literacy, where children get the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills in an online environment so that they can make smart choices. This education should start when children are young, in an age and stage appropriate manner. If children are getting their first device and exploring the online world in primary school, and we know that they are, then these discussions need to start both at home and in school at least at the same time, if not before. It would be good to start talking about things like self regulation and achieving a healthy balance from an early age as many of the online platforms are designed to be addictive. According to Dr. Jenny Radesky, a US-based developmental behavioural paediatrician from the American Academy of Paediatrics, we can begin to teach children to self regulate from as young as six or seven years of age.

In 2017, a survey by Barnardos in the UK found that 70% of 11 to 15 year old children in England wanted the government to ensure that all children have school lessons on sex and relationships. Some 96% of the children surveyed felt that it was important for them to understand the dangers of being online so that they can stay safe. I do not believe we have carried out a similar survey in Ireland but I suspect the figures would be broadly similar and it would be well worth ascertaining young Irish people’s views as part of this review.

We provided a set of recommendations in our earlier submission and I will not repeat them. I would like to emphasise, however, the importance of ensuring that digital literacy is a compulsory part of the curriculum at both primary and secondary level, along with age and stage appropriate discussions around issues related to what children are exposed to in an online environment. Such additions to the curriculum will help to mitigate against risks that children face in the online world and enable them to embrace the opportunities that exist there for them.

I thank for the committee for the opportunity to speak today and I look forward to members' questions.