Mr. Tiernan Kenny:

The Deputy has highlighted two concerns there. First was the content children are seeing and second was some of the functionality of the apps that may incentivise them to spend more time online. That is something that is being addressed through the DSA. Dr. Evans mentioned earlier that we are involved in one of the European Commission's open investigations into TikTok, which is looking at the impact of the recommender system, what is called the rabbit hole effect, where users are constantly served the same content again and again and it eventually maybe ends up shaping their views.

The European Commission has also recently published guidelines for Article 28 of the DSA. Article 28 states that online platforms have to ensure the safety, security and privacy of minors using their services and that addresses some of those design elements. For child accounts, platforms are not supposed to have that infinite scroll functionality. They are also not supposed to have the pull or swipe to refresh function anymore.

They are also supposed to check the content they are feeding into the recommender systems and to consider intervention. We know already that some of the platforms, when they deal with a child's account, will nudge the child away from the platform after he or she has spent a certain amount of time watching content. If a child has watched a number of videos on a particular topic, they will try to reset it by introducing something that is a little different to try to break up that whole effect. We would like to give members some reassurance that progress is being made there. These are issues we are alive to, along with the European Commission and our regulatory counterparts across Europe.