Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 12 May 2021

Joint Committee on Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht

General Scheme of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill 2020: Discussion (Resumed)

Dr. Tijana Milosevic:

I want to support my colleagues in what they have said. If this is impossible to institute for some reasons, we wish to underscore the point that it is important to provide psychological and counselling supports to children who experience this. We have found, and I believe it was indicated by the children who appeared as witnesses before the committee last week, that very often they find themselves in a situation where the reporting of it does not work for some reason. What happens is that content spills over from one platform to another, and it is the case that the content is spreading and the child is not able to get the right support. As we have seen from research, very often it is not enough to have the content taken down. What also matters to children is to have that follow-up, where they get the educational and psychological support as victims, particularly of cyberbullying which is the focus of our research. Therefore, in addition to having content removed, supports for an individual must be in place. We recommend that it is most important to consider that there is a good infrastructure to support children when they find themselves in these situations and to support them individually.

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