Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to amendment No. 164, in which Sinn Féin calls for the new media commission to produce a directive outlining appropriate minimum age requirements for children to create online accounts. I am thinking, in particular, about the metaverse here. These are obviously environments that present huge opportunities for education and learning but I am conscious that this is the most significant attempt we have made, alongside the Digital Services Act, to regulate the 2D screen, yet we know that for children and people of all ages when they put on a headset it is a completely different physical and psychological experience and it has different privacy repercussions. The harms of the metaverse in particular are not yet clear. There have been incidents of sexual assault. We would like the media commission to bring forward proposals on a minimum age requirement for children's online accounts, which would apply to all of the social media companies, 2D screen, the metaverse and so on. Senator Malcolm Byrne had a briefing for people on the headsets. This was also a recommendation of the committee in its pre-legislative report. The Children's Rights Alliance was supportive of an age limit for the establishment of an online account.