Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is very true.

I happen to be unusual in thinking that in general social media has been a force for good. Do not shoot me. I think it is the most recent expression of our deep desire as a species to communicate with one another. We have been communicating with one another from when we sat around campfires trying to develop early language through to speaking to Neil Armstrong on the moon through to the mobile phone I have here, with which I can communicate instantaneously with anybody in the world I choose to seek out. Social media is the most recent and powerful expression of that. I accept there are entities and people who manipulate it for their own interests. We need to be careful in ensuring that we protect as best we can against that.

With the bottomless resources available to them and with the ubiquitous nature of how they find themselves in our lives every day, to an extent we are tilting at windmills to think we can somehow force the social media companies into a place where everything is wonderful on social media and all of the content we see is of the highest standard and can be trusted. I do not think we will ever get there. It is stupid to consider that is even an option. However, it is vital to educate our young people to be able to discern the difference.

Coimisiún na Meán may have already looked at this. A key element of its work in ensuring that the consumption of social media does not bring the harms to society that it has the potential to do is educating our young people to have the critical faculties necessary to dissect, disassemble and be able to identify what they can trust and what they absolutely should not trust. Has Coimisiún na Meán considered collaborations with the Department of Education or the education and training boards, ETBs? That is an important element of protecting future generations in how they analyse and consume social media. Social media is not going away. It will become ever more present in our lives. That is something we need to consider.