Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is good to hear everyone’s perspective, so I thank the witnesses.

I will begin by showing my appreciation of the fact that, although the commission has only been in place for a year, a large amount has already been accomplished. The commission has been forthright in the media in discussing and explaining matters. I appreciate that. I am optimistic about what lies ahead.

In 2016, Dr. Cathy O’Neil published her book, Weapons of Math Destruction. In that, she flagged the idea that big data would increase inequality and undermine democracy. We also had people like Professor Mary Aiken discussing the cyber effect and publishing a book at the same time. The confluence of both started me thinking about what life was like for our child. Children are open to direct bullying and their presence on a platform in and of itself brings about an opportunity to be bullied. Even if they are not bullied overtly, their self-esteem is attached to how many likes they get and whether a certain group at school liked or did not like something. Behaviour starts being modified to chase the dragon that is the social media presence and the amplification of same. My child is eight years old and she comes home from school talking about YouTubers. I have to sit her down and say that those people are not living in the real world. When the girls at school talk about so and so or we watch YouTube on the big screen in the kitchen – I do that so that I can keep an eye on it, have conversations with her in the same way as my mother would have had with me about TV programmes and try to keep up with the culture – I have to explain that a lot of what she is seeing is not real and is not our everyday lived experience and that her chats with others in school or her own expectations about what life should look like should not be based on that.

There is not the same regulation of content, but children pursue that self-esteem through that lens of what is on platforms.

The next issue relates to the content that is on there, which we talk about that. I have great faith in the coimisiún's regulation, and its reputation relating to the day of the riots has been exemplary. What I have heard of what it did to click into action is brilliant and I commend our guests on their assistance and on getting on to the platforms, reminding them of the issues and reminding them to have manners on the day. A large volume of content was taken down and, for all we saw, a large volume did not get to be seen in the way it could have been. There is this content, and there is the pulling of people into an echo chamber of their own beliefs. I attended a public meeting on referendums last night with one of our councillors. A woman stood up, held up a book that she claimed was the Constitution and pointed out that the Bunreacht is not really the Constitution. We have all been served with that document. That woman absolutely believed what she was saying; she said it in an absolutely authoritative manner. At the same time, I was standing there thinking that arguing with her would be difficult, but what she was saying had come from an echo chamber of communities on platforms that emphasise certain issues. That comes from recommender systems and pulling people into reinforcing their own beliefs.

Those are the two obvious issues, but there is a third one. I cannot but recommended the coimisiún's website, which is brilliant. It sets out what is illegal and what is related to the various legislation and that is all incredibly well done, but there is a third aspect that relates to a cultural shift. We have been lured into a friction-free world whereby if I need to look up something, I can have it straight away. If I go onto different search engines where privacy is respected, it does not happen in the same way. They will not fill in my credit card details or do all these things in the instant world we live in. There is also, however, a business model at the heart of all this that is about capturing our attention and selling it. We are the product that is being sold to advertisers. Are we educating people about that issue in our literature and saying enough? I fully believe children should not have phones under any circumstances. There are heaps of things online that they should not be looking at. They should not be on YouTube. The idea that ten-year-olds are in their rooms unsupervised on these websites is horrific. There is, however, a cultural shift towards instant gratification, a lack of attention, behavioural modification and so on. How are we going to capture that? Switching off the recommender algorithm is one way of undermining that business model, but if that is only for children and we do only that, can we enforce it? Are there workarounds? Alcohol companies that are not allowed to advertise their products containing alcohol are now flooding the sides of rugby pitches with their 0.0 products, so they have got around that. How can we anticipate the workaround? Is enough research being carried out? I am trying to solicit our guests' opinions or where they think there might be gaps still to come, such that we can try to move ahead of that.