THE MINISTER WHO SIMPLY WON’T LISTEN TO PARENTS
Yesterday ANOTHER paedophile was jailed for grooming a child online. Meanwhile, a petition for smartphone age limits has been signed by over 1,500 people: the idea is backed by many teachers, doctors – AND the majority of voters. Yet Denis Naughten would
THE Communications Minister has invited Facebook, Google and internet firms to lecture the country on child internet safety – but he won’t offer a similar platform to supporters of smartphone age limits. At Denis Naughten’s ‘Open Policy Debate’ on safety online today, the tech giants – which have a vested interest in increasing children’s internet use – are invited to address the gathering as main panellists.
However, the minister has rejected requests from supporters of smartphone age limits, including this newspaper, to tackle the tech giants in the debate.
Instead, Mr Naughten has assembled a panel of speakers who are either representatives of the tech industry, or are Government-appointed or Government-funded.
And none of those listed as panellists are considered critics of current Government policy, which actually involves lowering the digital age of consent to just 13 years of age, and avoiding any
‘prescriptive’ rules to protect children online. Even the world’s foremost cyber-psychologists, UCD’s Dr Mary Aiken, has refused to take a place on the panel after deciding it was nothing but a ‘talking shop’, which would do nothing to help youngsters.
While advocates of smartphone age limits have been told they might be able to ask a question from the floor during a brief Q&A session, they will not be able to join the main debate or challenge any assertions made by panellists.
Nor will they be able to put forward the mounting evidence that smartphones endanger children, or tackle any misleading suggestions about how age limits would work.
Minister Naughten’s refusal to give a platform to supporters of smartphone age limits will be considered a kick in the teeth to more than 500 people who signed the Irish Daily Mail’s petition calling for such a law, and more than 1,100 who signed the online version. And it flies in the face of a string of opinion polls which have shown massive support for such an idea among the voting public.
An Irish Daily Mail poll in January revealed that more than two-thirds of people supported a smartphone ban for those aged under 16. According to the Irish Daily Mail/ Ireland Thinks poll, 69% support the ban for under-16s, 30% don’t, and only 1% had no opinion.
This was followed by a survey published by TheJournal.ie later that month, revealing that 76% of people are in favour of teenagers under the age of 14 being banned from using smartphones. Only 20% didn’t support such as measure, while 4% were unsure.
A similar poll, released earlier that week by RTÉ’s Claire Byrne Live, indicated that 56% think the Government should ban young people from using smartphones until they are teenagers.
Dozens of Irish school heads have also backed this newspaper’s campaign to set a minimum age for children to own smartphones.
More than 90 principals from across the country said they back the idea. Michael Horan, principal at St Brendan’s National School in Rathcoole, Co. Cork, told the Mail last month that children don’t need smartphones. ‘There’s absolutely no reason why a child in primary school needs a smartphone, absolutely none,’ he said.
The credibility of today’s debate will be damaged by the absence of Dr Aiken and Professor Barry O’Sullivan, widely considered the leading academics in their fields.
Dr Aiken has previously said she believes children under the age of 14 should not own phones and could be at risk from predators who can groom them via apps unbeknownst to their parents.
She had initially been willing to attend the event, as she believed it would be a good opportunity to debate the Digital Age of Consent, the age at which children can sign up for online services such as social media sites without their parents’ permission. However, she said she pulled out when she realised the Government was dead-set on lowering the age of consent to 13, which she believes is too young.
Professor O’Sullivan said the objective of today’s event wasn’t clear to him. ‘It seems to be more about political optics than a robust debate on the issues,’ he said.
Among the panellists invited by minister Naughten to discuss child safety are Niamh Sweeney, who is Head of Public Policy for Facebook; Ryan Meade, who works in public policy for Google; and Ana Niculescu of Hotline.ie, a service funded by internet service providers.
Facebook has in the past been criticised after the revelation of an internal document which suggested it can tell advertisers when a teenager is unhappy – so the child can be targeted with an advert to exploit their mood.
According to the report in The Australian newspaper, the selling point of the 2017 document is that Facebook’s algorithms can determine, and allow advertisers to pinpoint, ‘moments when young people need a confidence boost’.
Facebook’s document also reportedly offered a litany of teen emotional states that the company claims it can estimate, based on how teens use the service, including ‘worthless’, ‘insecure’, ‘defeated’, ‘anxious’, ‘silly’, ‘useless’, ‘stupid’, ‘overwhelmed’, ‘stressed’, and ‘a failure’. Facebook initially apologised for the document before later describing the report as ‘misleading’.
In a letter to this newspaper following a request to be allowed to put the case for smartphone age limits, Minister Naughten appeared to suggest debating smartphone age limits was not considered an ‘important’ aspect of a discussion about online safety.
He said the panellists, including the tech industry’s representatives, ‘have been selected from across various stakeholder groups to provide the basis for a discussion among participants on what the most important aspects of online safety are that need to be addressed’.
Among those to support an age limit for smartphones is broadcaster and GP, Dr Ciara Kelly who believes under-16s should not be allowed to own the devices.
However Mr Naughten said: ‘As the Minister for Communications... and as the father of four young children, online safety has been a personal policy priority for me since taking office.
‘I believe online safety is one of the greatest challenges we face today yet it is important that our response to the risks is realistic and robust while acknowledging the many benefits that the internet brings.’
Comment – Page 12
sean.dunne@dailymail.ie
‘It seems to be more about optics’