Plan for internet safety czar ‘has been shelved’
THE Government has reneged on its promise to appoint a Digital Safety Commissioner this year to keep the most vile of material off the internet.
The delay will worry parents, teachers and carers already alarmed over the failure to use legislation to tackle the crisis of young children owning and using smartphones.
In January, Communications Minister Denis Naughten insisted the online czar would definitely be appointed – even though Taoiseach Leo Varadkar pooh-pooed the idea at the time.
Yesterday, the minister conceded this would not happen and claimed the legislation required was more complex than originally envisaged. However, the Government’s new online safety plan strongly hinted it would never
happen. The plan does pay lip service to the idea of a czar, but tech companies are understood to have been angered at the notion of a regulator with powers to tell them how they must act, as they want to regulate themselves.
While Mr Naughten indicated that he still hoped to establish a Digital Safety Commissioner, yesterday’s web safety plan picked a number of holes in the notion of having one.
The report, presented by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, said the commissioner would have two main functions – and that one of these was already being done elsewhere, while the other could only be done with international cooperation.
Child safety charities yesterday
reacted with concern at the apparent shelving of the position, with the ISPCC warning that the tech companies could not simply be left to regulate themselves.
The new, grandly titled Action Plan for Online Safety will see the establishment of a national advisory council on internet safety headed by a Governmentappointed politician.
However, the plan was criticised as nothing more than a ‘cop-out’ and ‘talking shop’ by the Labour
Party yesterday. Its spokesman on Children and Youth Affairs, Seán Sherlock, said: ‘Once again we have another talking shop that will stall any regulation of online safety and do nothing to assuage the fears of parents who want a safe and regulated online space.
‘There are 25 goals outlined in the plan but the only mention of a Digital Commissioner is in goal 18. This is a sure sign that there is no intention by Government to establish such an office, despite
their previous commitments. It should be front and centre of any proposals.’ He continued: ‘I suspect
that the Government does not want to do anything that will upset tech giants that are located
here. Ireland is where every tech company that matters is located.
‘To suggest that we have to wait for international best practice to evolve to move on digital safety is a cop-out.’
But the Taoiseach suggested tech firms can be trusted to police themselves, saying: ‘In fairness to the big tech companies that are active online, any time I meet them they are very in tune to this issue.’
FOR all its faults, there is one respect in which yesterday’s new Action Plan for Online Safety is impressive. If the requirement was for a document which absolved the Government of any responsibility for doing anything to protect children online, then it was a success. If what you wanted was an exercise in passing the buck, in burying your head in the sand, in denying reality, in washing your hands of any responsibility to take any decisive action to actually make the digital world a safer place for our young people, then this Action Plan fits the bill perfectly.
If what you wanted, however, was evidence that your government was taking this issue seriously, then this is not the document for you.
In order to achieve its desired effect, of course, the Inaction Plan (as it should properly be known) first establishes a series of entirely false narratives about what the problem is. The word ‘pornography’, for example, appears just once on the 55-page document, and yet children’s access to pornography – including the most vile, violent and depraved material ever created – ranks among parents’ biggest concerns about the online world.
The report goes on to make the bizarre claim that ‘we are only in the early stages of understanding how smartphone usage affects how and when we consume content, and its impact’. The truth, of course, is that a plethora of studies have been published in recent years which show very clearly the impact smartphone usage is having on children. There is the London School of Economics report showing that schools which allow smartphone use will see average grades fall by 6% – while the grades of the most disadvantaged students will drop by 14%.
There is the seminal work by Professor Jean Twenge at San Diego University, showing that the advent of smartphones has brought with it an unprecedented surge in anxiety, loneliness, depression and suicide among children.
Myriad others show how smartphones are affecting youngsters’ ability to sleep, to make friends, to play games and to interact with their peers. Yet this Inaction Plan essentially pretends that this research does not exist.
Even in the one paragraph which accepts that there might be mental health effects from internet use, none of this research is detailed; rather, the authors cite a Bristol University study to suggest that the internet is actually a way of helping people with mental health issues.
In fact, while the study in question does suggest that such possibilities exist, its main finding is stark: ‘For most… the main purpose for going online was to research methods of suicide… [the internet] made individuals vulnerable by validating their feelings, legitimising suicide as a course of action, and providing knowledge about methods of suicide.’ And it concluded: ‘This research lends weight to previous suggestions that the internet may pose a particular threat to young people.’
And yet the Inaction Plan wouldn’t dream of telling us that kind of inconvenient truth. Almost every syllable is designed to justify doing nothing.
The document even manages to utterly undermine the need for a Digital Safety Commissioner, which we had been promised; instead we will get a toothless, politically-led talking shop.
All of this might be excusable if the Government wanted to find a reason not to build a new road or fund a new sports stadium, but this is about our children. This is the entire Government, from the Taoiseach down, looking at those children and saying: ‘We actually don’t care one iota about protecting you.’ And that, given our country’s record on child protection, is shameful indeed.