Ms Aoife Gallagher:

There seems to widespread support for measures to protect children from harmful content, which is very welcome. It is also important to realise that the addictive nature of social media does not just harm children's rights; it also harms adults' rights so we have to think about it at a cross-society level. A couple of solutions have been put in place around age verification, one of which is that the platforms will ask for some form of Government ID to prove age. We need to be wary of handing over any more information to social media platforms that have proved they do not act responsibly with personal data that is handed over to them, so I would be very wary of approaches that adopt that measure.

Issuing blanket bans - banning children from social media - is not realistic at all. I am sure we all remember being children. There is no doubt that they will find a way. However, there are other solutions. Again, it goes back to the algorithms. I am not just saying that this should be for children. It should be used by everyone who uses social media. The algorithms are where the harm is coming from. They are amplifying harmful information every day. People think we live in a free speech environment on social media. We do not. It is completely curated. If you go on to TikTok, you are not deciding on the videos you see. An algorithm is deciding that for you, which is extremely problematic. There is more the social media platforms can do around enhancing parental controls. I did research we released during the summer looking at YouTube in particular and the recommendations that come through YouTube accounts that were set up to be young teens - 13- and 14-year-olds. It was very clear that YouTube made no difference between the information it was sharing to a 13-year-old's account and information it was sharing to a 30-year-old's account, which is really problematic. There is so much more the platforms could be doing in terms of child safety. They all have rules and may have very detailed policies around child safety but they are not being enforced, which is where the issues lie.