Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like some other speakers, I am conflicted on this one. I will try to be brief because the weather is pretty bad and Members will be keen to get home this evening. I wonder how any child is disadvantaged by setting the age at 16 years. That is where I will start. There has been a considerable amount of debate and it comes down, in essence, to the conflict in trying to balance participation and safety. Children will get around the terms and conditions, regardless. Senator McDowell referred to the duty of parents. As legislators, we have a duty to be laser-focused in taking any steps to ensure children's safety online. Others have referred to this point, but these are evolving media and in a sense we are behind the curve as adults in catching up with children.

Senator McDowell also spoke about the statistics. I did some work about six months ago on the study that was mentioned. Of Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and the platforms most used by children, I find that Instagram is, in a sense, the happiest of those places. In fact, however, it was shown in the study to have the most negative impact on feelings of self-worth because of an idea it perpetuates that others' lives are better.Children do not have the ability adults have to know better. It is rare for people to put a bad photo of themselves up online or to try to depict their lives as somehow negative as opposed to being perfect. The salient point from the survey was that this is leading to increased anxiety and depression because it is difficult for children to cope with the very positive lives being portrayed when they do not feel that their lives are on the same wavelength as the fake reality they are viewing. It is surely fuelling a mental health crisis. There is no doubt about that.

When it comes to the data element of things, we are not talking about access to the Internet. We are talking about forming contracts with online companies. A GP friend of mine told me about a parent who came in to her recently. She discovered, quite by accident, that the parents are having issues at present. Suffice it to say that the young girl about whom the parent proceeded to tell my friend was interacting with a paedophile online. The language being used was around looking for attention, feeling low and that kind of thing. That is going on. That is a reality which we have to face.

To bring a bit of balance to what I am saying, and I agree with many of the points raised by both Senator Higgins and Senator Ruane in this regard, the Internet does have very positive attributes. We all know that. I believe that no matter what age we set as the digital age of consent, the issue is bigger than this one measure. The only show in town is a digital safety commissioner. If we had in place a digital safety commissioner focused on this area, it would afford a co-ordinated framework to deal with this issue. We would need to provide the commissioner with legal powers to regulate the sector, to provide better protection to children online and to ensure that children, young people and their parents are educated. That is what I come back to all the time. Children are going to get online and the issues around enforcement, registration and policing in this area are just so difficult to resolve. A digital age of consent has already been introduced in the US and recent research has shown-----