Ms Susan Moss:

I thank the Senator for his question. We are aware of the report. I have not seen the full report, which will not be aired until this evening. I want to assure every member of this committee, as we assured Coimisiún na Meán this morning, that we are looking into this as a matter of urgency. I want to say that we do not prohibit the glorification or promotion of self-harm or suicide on TikTok. However, RTÉ's investigation has revealed some elements that are of concern to us. We have taken action immediately on that. Context is important here. Like the Senator, I have only seen the reporting of this matter this morning. As a result, I can only speak on the basis of what I have seen. We estimate RTÉ to have seen 1,000 videos during its experiment. From those, it flagged ten videos of concern to us through screenshots.

The majority of them were not violative but we absolutely recognise that they should not have been shown to anyone under the age of 18. Of the content that was shown to us by RTÉ, two of those videos were violative and we have taken action, and one was not violative. As far as I am concerned one negative experience is one experience too many. We have gone back and are looking at it and taking action. RTÉ's experiment has to be seen in the context in which it was conducted, in the sense that it is not, as far as we are concerned, representative of how an individual normally experiences TikTok. As far we can tell by the reporting, RTÉ looked at a number of videos but skipped videos unless they were related to mental health. The average person does not interact that way with TikTok. They have a variety of interests, a multiplicity of different interest levels, from camogie to interior design. No one individual just looks at mental health content. I need to see the full reporting in its entirety, but I stress that we are committed to continually looking at this area and how we can strengthen our processes, particularly for our younger users.