Professor James O'Higgins Norman:

I thank the committee for the invitation to come today. I am joined by my colleagues, Dr. Mairéad Foody and Dr. Tijana Milosevic, researchers with international experience working at the anti-bullying centre, ABC, in DCU. The national anti-bullying research and resource centre is a university-designated research centre that brings together not just researchers from across DCU but across colleges in Ireland and abroad. The centre receives public and private funding, which allows us to undertake research and develop resources into issues relating to bullying and online safety. There are currently 20 researchers based at the centre and researchers at the centre were the first in Ireland to undertake research on school bullying, cyberbullying, workplace bullying, homophobic bullying, sibling bullying and "sexting" relating to mental health and well-being with young people. The centre currently delivers a whole school, community anti-bullying and online safety programme to post-primary schools in Ireland and it is available for free to those schools. The programme, called FUSE, focuses on bridging the gap that often exists between parents, teachers and students in tackling bullying and promoting online safety.

Members of the committee have already received our full submission so I will highlight in summary three areas we hope will be helpful to the committee in determining what laws and regulations are appropriate for dealing with online harassment and related matters. With legislation, we support the move to increase oversight of social media and related platforms and the level of this oversight is ultimately a decision for the Government to determine. We recommend that consideration be given to the experiences in other countries where hastily introduced regulations have been ultimately found not to work as originally intended. Legislation should be informed by sound research, including the voices of young people.

We welcome the recent announcement by the National Advisory Council for Online Safety, NACOS, that it is commissioning national research that will provide insights to those seeking to develop legislation and guidelines on online harassment.

We encourage the committee to take into account a range of platforms on which cyberbullying may occur and not just a handful of large social media companies. Our research shows that children and young people are equally likely to be bullied or have negative experiences on gaming platforms, for example, as well as content-sharing apps, friending apps, and artificial intelligence platforms and chatbots. The established social media companies tend to have more developed resources to address various online harms that may not always be available to the various start-ups, which spring up quickly and accumulate significant numbers of young users. We are by no means suggesting that the big companies should evade scrutiny, merely that a range of platforms should be taken into consideration when designing legislation while being mindful of the need to protect innovation and freedom of expression. Incentivising safety by design might be one approach to addressing this issue.

Regarding support, cyberbullying is not merely an online safety issue but is also a behavioural problem. Therefore, removing content alone may not solve the conflict, which can continue on other platforms or offline. Any legislation that only or predominantly focuses on content removal might miss the opportunity to address the problem at a level beyond merely addressing its symptoms. Legislation should also focus on providing funding for support to those who have been victimised online. Often the removal of content is only the first step in a process of overcoming trauma related to online harassment, and further counselling and support may be required. This could include funding for psychological counselling services available to children involved in cyberbullying both as bullies and as victims. This could also entail the provision of funding for helpline services which offer counselling and educational support to prevent future incidents reoccurring.

Regarding prevention, cyberbullying by children and teenagers often relates to a lack of understanding and appreciation of the effects their actions and words might have on other children or teenagers whom they target. We have found in research that the provision of education related to online safety, tolerance, kindness, diversity and inclusion can go a long way to reducing the level of bullying and cyberbullying. Securing funding for educational measures aimed at prevention could also be considered. Specifically, there is a need to create a national standardised cyberbullying or online safety prevention and intervention curriculum, which could include online safety instruction and which would be deployed not just in schools but also in sports clubs, youth clubs, online training for young people who use the Internet, advertisements, marketing and engagement with parents and so on throughout the country. This could also constitute a way forward in promoting online safety among young people.