Jen Cummins (Dublin South Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to focus on young people. I have worked with young people through youth work and through the school completion programme for many decades. Their involvement in the online world is as important to many of them as their real-life existence. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw a huge replacement of the physical – being together and playing – with online life. We regulate things. If you go to the cinema, there is an age rating for the film that you are going to watch. If you want to drive a car, you have to be above a minimum age. There are age regulations for online platforms but they never seem to be implemented.

I just want to share some examples from when I worked with young people, as late as a year ago and as far back as when children were playing online games on their Xbox or PlayStation, whatever its iteration at the time. How frightening it was for young people then. Some of the children I worked with spoke about being targeted by adults when playing with their friends, supposedly safe in a room. How frightening that is. If they told us that was happening to them when out playing on the road, we would be totally alert, but we are not alert when it happens online.

Parents and the Government have to do so much but the default setting for any of the platforms young people go on should ensure safety. It should start with safety, and other things should require opting in. When you get into a car, it is set to be safe; you opt to do stupid things. We should be providing a safety network for anyone who wants to be online, whether a child or an adult. The sooner we have an adult conversation about what needs to be done, the better. Rather than chasing headlines and trying to be the best in the world about everything, we need to be realistic and listen to young people and anybody who uses online platforms.

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