Our body politic lies prostrate before untrammelled power of tech giants
THIS era will be defined in history by the development of the internet. It is as transformational and significant as the Industrial Revolution was two centuries ago.
Its economic and sociological impact will be recorded as the greatest intergenerational gamechanger ever.
The internet has become so integral to commerce and lifestyles that it’s key to our national infrastructure. High-speed capacity broadband rollout is as necessary as was the introduction of electricity.
Ireland Inc’s fortunes are highly dependent on the tech sector. Tech-related exports this year are set to reach €80bn. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook and LinkedIn outstrip the agri/food, pharma, tourism and semi-state corporates in employment. In cold hard cash terms the €4bn of corporation tax receipts from foreign-owned multinationals depend on the internet.
The digital explosion has irreversibly transformed entire models of business. It has transformed booking in the travel/hospitality trade, betting and retail/telephone platforms.
It has devoured 50pc of traditional media advertising revenues. It is poised to displace high-street shopping and banking across the consumer purchasing spectrum.
Even State services, from cradle to grave, will be accessed exclusively through an integrated Public Services Card.
This will touch on electronic health records, integrated tax, social welfare codes and enable a systemic, streamlined administration.
It can deliver more reliable, faster, accessible, informative, efficient public services. Positive benefits of a cashless and paperless society are self-evident.
Yet the light from this instant window on the world of information from Dr Google and Mr Wikipedia has been threatened by darkening clouds. We could be sleepwalking into grave danger. The mental health of new generations and our most vulnerable children could be at serious risk.
New minefields such as organised cybercrime, cyber-stalking, sex-tortion and cyber-bullying confront our young.
The same tech giants that have become our economic foundation could be exploited to threaten the safety of students.
Parents and grandparents are far less savvy about smartphones than their children. From mobile apps to passwords to bypassing security restrictions, older folk are woefully ignorant about gateways to porn, grooming or gangs.
When it comes to the click-bait culture, senior decision-makers in households may well be the most clueless – myself included.
Last Tuesday was Safer Internet Day and recent surveys of schoolchildren’s screen habits reveal 86pc have access to a smartphone, laptop, or tablet.
Two-thirds of sixth class children have ready access to online apps. Some 57pc of teenagers spend more than three hours online every day.
And it’s addictive, with almost half admitting to being unable to last more than two hours off-line.
Alarmingly, half of those same primary school kids admit they played with a complete stranger online. One-in-four chats to strangers online, 45pc of sixth-year students admit to sexting and 34pc have sent a suggestive image. Hormones and smartphones make for a pernicious poison.
But the online safety of children appears to be the responsibility of parents, Government and schools and not seemingly part of the sale or supply of smartphone manufacturers or social media platforms.
Surely we need to urgently listen to international experts including cyber psychologist Dr Mary Aiken, who has quantified the online consequences for teenagers.
Smartphone usage amongst this cohort has increased sleep deprivation by 70pc. It has fuelled anxiety, depression, sometimes even suicide.
Research shows the constant focus on personal image on social networks has resulted in some 90pc of young girls being unhappy with their bodies; many develop eating disorders.
The critical legislative focus has to be the digital age of consent, rather than the banning of the smart phone.
This would set the age at which any person can access or subscribe to a social media platform without parental consent.
The Government proposes the age of 13 whereas in Germany, Netherlands and France the threshold is 16 years. In 2016, the EU recommended it should be 16, but allowed member states discretion to lower it to 13.
The recent Matthew Horan conviction in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court revealed the horror of girls as young as 11 exchanging sexually-explicit material on platforms including Snapchat, Instagram, musical.ly and Kik.
App developers, internet service providers, social media platforms and device manufacturers across these communication channels currently bear no responsibility or liability for child protection.
There’s a clear issue for the tech industry. Raising the digital age of consent to 16 means losing hundreds of thousands of teenage users.
Well-meaning parents still
wallow in innocence of their kid’s secrecy and the perils that go with it, while the Government appears to take the easy option on the minimum age for registration online to suit the profithungry tech giants.
They run the risk of facilitating the evil of other cyber blackmailers.
Child abuse has moved beyond historic horrors we have learned about in the home to accommodate malevolent mentors and exposure to extreme content online.
ADULT pornography, extreme violence and websites promoting selfharm should be subject to legal class actions.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar dismissively slapped down Junior Minister Jim Daly when he proposed PPS numbers be used as age verification when validating identity online.
The Government last month published legislation to legalise 13 years as the age of digital consent.
We seem so in hock to the tech giants that politicians appear to put their interests above the welfare of children and vigilantes appear to act as a more realistic deterrent to would-be online groomers than the State.
Predators swoop on young teenagers. Conversations become sexual. Grooming gangs manipulate nudity.
Live streaming involves furtive recording. Videos are then hawked to paedophiles. Blackmail demands ensue with the entrapment of minors. Children are forced to lie to their parents.
Policymakers/politicians are asleep as the criminal underworld spins a wider, more ruinous web.
Meanwhile, gardaí, Data Protection Commission and enforcement by the proposed Digital Safety Commissioner are all under-resourced. They are minnows compared to the might of the social media global behemoths.
The Ombudsman for Children and Children’s Rights Alliance argues it’s unrealistic to set an older consent age for children. Nonsense – 13-year-olds aren’t allowed legalised sex, alcohol, tobacco or drugs.
The tech sector wields enormous ‘soft power’ because of its fiscal importance. That’s why fake news, cyber-bullying, trolling and shaming have free rein.
Trial by Twitter amounts to mob rule through anonymity. Regulation of social media amounts to a laissez-faire, free-for-all for the digital industry.
The Law Reform Commission’s legislative recommendations in 2016 – to establish a statutory code of conduct in terms of taking down offensive anonymous material from the internet and hosting images without consent – still lie dormant.
The body politic lies prostrate while cyber-culpability gets a free pass.