Dr. Mary Aiken:

I think the Deputy is quite right: we have not seen its long-term impacts. We, as academics, are only raising these issues now. We do not have the longitudinal studies that show this definitively to be what we call causation according to scientific testing. However, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if an eight year old boy is looking at hardcore pornography, by the time he is 18 he will be damaged as a result of exposure to that content. Coming back to relationships, the Internet is effectively a lean medium. While texting and the connectivity involved in it seem spectacular in that there are so many connections, as humans we are hardwired to read facial expressions. That is how we evolve and socialise with one another. I have been inundated with calls from school principals since this whole debate started informing me of reports coming back from employers of transition year students placed in workplaces to the effect that these kids have impoverished social skills and very poor eye contact and, as the Deputy said, cannot make phone calls, book anything or gather information. This is one of the reasons France has banned phones in primary and secondary schools, not only because of the addictive nature of the device but also because the kids were not socialising at breaks. They were sitting with their devices in linear huddles rather than actually talking to one another and they were not reading emotions well. This was also leading to cyberbullying problems because they were not able to tell by reading someone's facial expressions that he or she was getting upset. The second point raised relates to exercise. We have an increasing problem with obesity in young people. The kids were sitting with the devices and not moving around at lunchtime or break-time. This is something to consider. We are certainly considering it at school level.

The Deputy's point about the hyper-sexualisation of children is very valid. As a cyber-behavioural scientist, I am very concerned about the impact of this on young people. Again, we are seeing reports of young people presenting in clinical environments with chronic sexual dysfunction as a result of being exposed to hardcore content. I put it to the committee that no one will take responsibility for a child being exposed to extreme content - for example, adult hardcore pornography - but whether one is the device manufacturer, the Internet service provider or the entity that generated or hosted the content, basically, when a child is exposed to this extreme content, one is collectively involved in the abuse of the child. I think it is only a matter of time before State agencies such as Tusla will have to become involved with children who have been exposed to extreme hardcore content online. For the record, paedophiles expose children to such material to desensitise them in order to groom them.