Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was at a presentation by Haven Horizons yesterday in the audiovisual room, as were others. This domestic, sexual and gender-based violence prevention centre does wonderful work - without proper State funding, I might add, something that needs to be looked at. At the discussion afterwards, an issue I was mulling over came up, and that was the contribution that social media make to such violent and coercive activity, where young boys especially are given unfiltered access to the most misogynistic material, where Andrew Tate and the self-proclaimed Irish patriarchal patriot Andrew Tayto and other pathetic excuses for real men become, through algorithms designed to entice and excite, the substitute male role models for an online generation. It is not just about boys; all our children are being sent the wrong messages about how to treat one another. They all want to be on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Discord and other platforms and there is huge social media pressure - call it FOMO if you will - to be included with one's peers in the online world.

Social media are having a profound impact on the mental health of young people in Ireland, linked to an increase in anxiety and depression as our young people try to compare themselves with others. There is this unrealistic lifestyle perpetuated by celebrities and influencers which can affect the most impressionable in a very bad way. We have always been challenged by bullying behaviour in the real world, but it has been magnified by social media platforms where individuals can anonymously harass and intimidate the target or sometimes do it as part of a group pile-on, where someone is bullied or excluded, including, unfortunately, so many incidences where young people - and I have recent examples in my constituency - have been told bluntly to harm or even kill themselves. We have had sometimes tragic results in this country. We complain about how lack of regulation has turned social media into a cesspit for adults, but for children it is worse. We have vulnerable developing minds, in some ways, yes, more clued in than older generations to scams and spam, but at the same time less discerning as to how they access news content, what they share with their peers and what they learn from inappropriate access to adult content without any context or filters.

Calls for regulation have not worked so we need to move to the next level. At this point, as a legislator, I believe we should seriously explore what they are doing in Australia, a liberal country, where the world's strictest laws on social media have been enacted for under-16s, to come into being 12 months from now. They have to look at different ways of doing it. Is it not time we looked at doing something similar? It is not a panacea and there are drawbacks, but our children must come first, not the super-rich tech barons currently prostrating themselves before the Trump Administration.

See this speech in context