‘THERE WAS NEVER A BAN ON THE PEN’

COMMUNICATIONS Minister Denis Naughten appeared to compare smartphones with pens in yesterday’s debate on child safety online, saying said governments ‘didn’t ban pens’ when they were first invented despite the fact that what they are used to write can be hurtful.

In his closing remarks to the discussion, Mr Naughten likened a call for age limits on smartphones to the idea of banning pens. ‘When the pen was invented, we didn’t ban pens – and the pen is mightier than the sword,’ he said. ‘It’s what is written with that – the output from that – that is the issue,’ he said.

‘And that is the one thing we all need to be very conscious of and work towards ensuring: [that] we protect ourselves, our families and communities and most importantly, our children

His analogy appeared to ignore the fact that pens cannot access hard-core pornography and violence, expose children to paedopiles posing as children or contribute to growing levels of anxiety and depression among young people.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar used a different analogy when he said that educating children on the dangers of the internet was a better policy than keeping them off it. He said teaching children internet safety was like teaching them to swim.

‘Our role is to manage that risk; we can’t stand on the shore and demand that the tide retreat. There are bad people offline so it’s no surprise that there are also bad people online, and the internet makes it much easier for these people to get together and get access to other people,’ Mr Varadkar said.

However, he failed to point out that while adults may teach their children to swim, it would not be advisable for them to leave the youngsters to enter potentially dangerous waters unsupervised.