Ms Martina Chapman:

A really interesting point was raised. There are probably parents across the country who are thinking "Yes, I'm feeling that too". Children and parents face particular challenges online, particularly around that time when there is a move to secondary school. There are a lot of benefits in technology for children of that age. There are numerous risks, as have been pointed out already. Regarding depending on some kind of technological interventions to ensure that children are safe online, I have been in the area of media literacy for a very long time. At the beginning, a protectionist approach was taken to online child safety. It was a belief that we could try to protect them from all of the dangers. Technology changes. As Ms McGinley said, children will find a way to get to the content they want to get to. This comes back to media literacy. It is similar to the issue around disinformation. There is no simple answer to this. It is complex and the solution will probably involve a number of different approaches. One of those is about empowering parents to support their children on this journey. That is not easy because it is a bit like teachers. Parents need help as well, particularly when we feel our children probably know more about this technology than we do. How on earth do we start this conversation? Webwise.ie has phenomenal resources, not just for young people and teachers but also for parents, that are specifically designed to help parents start to have those conversations with children and start to build relationships and have conversations about technology, its use and, going back to the media literacy piece, understanding the role of recommender systems and algorithms, how content reaches you, whether it is appropriate and what the problems might be around that.