Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 23 April 2024

Joint Committee On Children, Equality, Disability, Integration And Youth

Ireland's International Obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Discussion

3:00 pm

Bel Nabulele:

Quarantine during Covid made everyone get a phone because you needed one or some sort of device to go to class. I do not believe electronic devices are the problem so much as the regulation of social media, as other speakers have said. I was on my first social media platform when I was seven. It is really easy to set up once you see other people do it. It would be good if social media platforms checked ID to make sure users are not really young children. The same applies to AI. Let me refer to an idea that just popped into my head: just as there is a YouTube for everyone and YouTube Kids, there could be a child-friendly version of AI to make sure what children see is appropriate to their age group and not what they should not be seeing.