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:

It is fake reality, and we are seeing the emergence of eating disorders in young boys because at 13 they are expected to have a six pack and they are not physiologically capable of generating that muscle mass at that age. The boys and girls are objects online, and they are being expected to leapfrog from being a child at nine to becoming an adult at 11 or 12. Childhood as we know it is being compromised. In time, when we have enough evidence to show the damage, then legislation will change and governments will begin to pay attention. Then we will try to undo a damaged generation. There is a great quotation, which is that we are living through the largest unregulated social experiment of all time with this generation that has been exposed to technology in this way.