Expert urges: Don’t buy smartphones for pupils
A TOP cyber expert believes no primary school pupil should own a smartphone and has urged parents to give their children a basic ‘dummy’ device if they want to stay in touch.
Jason O’Mahony, from Co. Cork, founded Children of the Digital Age in 2016. He has worked in law enforcement for more than 15 years and also visits schools educating children about the dangers of the web and how to use technology responsibly.
Ahead of the new academic year, the cyber expert has issued a stark warning to parents to ‘not buy kids smartphones’.
‘If parents feel the need to give their kids a phone then there is what we call the “dummy phone” – for the entire world it looks like a smartphone, it just has no access to the internet,’ he said.
‘The danger you are eliminating is that your child has no internet access so is instantly safer.
‘While you have some chance of monitoring a smartphone at home, once they leave the home with an internet-enabled device the child is left to manage a world they are unprepared for.’ Mr O’Mahony added one of the worst things he has heard in schools was a third class pupil stating she had over 10,000 Snapchat friends.
‘When I have gone into schools and when we asked older children would you allow children in the year under you to have a smartphone, consistently, the older children tell us they themselves would not.
‘This is children from 6th class, right down to 1st class.
‘When asked why, they cite problems such as fights with their friends and feeling lonely and isolated.’
The digital expert also works alongside James Neary who has more then a decade of experience in law enforcement, most of it in the field of online child exploitation investigations.
They also consult with Mick Moran, the former assistant director of Interpol’s human trafficking and child exploitation section.
During the course of his studies at UCD and learning about the online exploitation of children, Mr O’Mahony decided to set up his own agency as he realised other parents were as in the dark about the web as he was.
‘What I have found from speaking to parents is that when giving devices to children, they are projecting their experiences of the devices onto the child that doesn’t have life experience yet,’ he explained. ‘When parents were growing up they were afforded a level of anonymity that children now don’t get.
‘I suppose now we are giving children devices we are taking their anonymity and ultimately their privacy away from them without even realising the true impact of what it is going to do to a child for the rest of their life.’
He also questioned the practice of parents posting pictures of their children online.
‘Parents put up images of their children more often than they put up images of themselves,’ he added. ‘We have no problem doing this to our children, removing their anonymity. We aren’t just showing friends, it’s everyone on the planet. Once it’s up it’s up.’
To find out more, visit https:// childrenofthedigitalage.org/
‘A world they’re not prepared for’