Aontú Leader and Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín has called Governments ban of children on social media as poorly thought out. An Teachta Tóibín stated:
Most parents will agree that children under the age of 16 should not be on social media. I have spoken to children on this and many of them said that they could do without social media, if none of their friends had social media. It’s the feeling of being left out that they find hard.
Screens have radically changed childhood, from 24-hour bullying to unhealthy passive physical inactivity, to isolation and loneliness, to violent pornographic content. Social media is made as sticky and addictive as possible and even adults find it difficult to control it.
We have difficulties with the approach. Firstly, they are ignoring much of the damage that online material is doing to children. The provision of violent hardcore pornography to children. This is leading to a significant increase in sexual violence against women in Ireland. Its leading to a shocking increase of children abusing other children. We provided a Bill to stop this 5 years ago. The government ignored it. We would favour age verification for this content.
Secondly, the government’s approach to social media is shockingly poorly thought out. Its has no real detail. There is no consultation with stakeholders. There is some suggestions that it will involve a digital id.
Some within the government have referenced the Public Services card. Is the government really considering a mandatory use of a Public Service Card for Social media access given that your government has broken the law already twice with the use of this card.
The mandatory collection of facial biometric data from millions of citizens is an incredibly invasive action in a liberal democracy. There are major privacy concerns with this. There will be significant push back in society if access to social media is dependent upon private details such as passports being provided to social media companies.
For the all the critics, social media is a public good. It has in many ways positively democratised media in the last 10 years.
The banning of Smart Phones to young children would be far easier to implement and would go a long way to protecting children.
