Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 13 February 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs

Cybersecurity for Children and Young Adults: Discussion (Resumed)

1:30 pm

Dr. Mary Aiken:

I know of parents who sleep with the router in their bedroom to stop their children from getting at it at night to change the settings. One thing I say to parents and that I will say to parents who are watching the proceedings is on the issue of parental controls which are always talked about. I ask them to turn on their computers and search for "bypassing parental controls". They will not sleep after doing so, but they will know what their kids know. There will be about 1 million results. There is no one size-fits-all solution to actually solve these problems. There are a lot of small problems.

If we can look at them simultaneously we can create context for problem solving.