Online Safety

I raise the topic of online safety and the regulation of social media platforms, which is a very topical issue given the EU KIDS Act, which we have been slowly learning about over the course of this week, as well as the focus on it during Ursula von der Leyen's state of the Union address just yesterday and the online safety conference run by the Minister of State's Department last week. I will start by talking about what we are trying to make safe and what the harms are. Across my constituency, including Dundrum, Stillorgan, Foxrock and Goatstown, and across the entire country, we are being contacted as representatives by parents who are at their wits' end trying to figure out how to manage this. They are so concerned at the dangers they see. When we design solutions to regulate these tech platforms to mitigate online harms, we have to think of what those harms are to find the right solutions. The first category is mental health concerns. Primary among them is the addictive nature of these products, what it means for all of us and what it is doing to our brains. There are also issues around self-harm being promoted, eating disorders and with the newest tools on the block, chatbots, we see people brought to suicide, essentially being nurtured bit by bit toward suicidal ideation and in some cases actually carrying out the act of suicide because an automated machine advised them this was a good idea. The second category one might talk about is disinformation. There is polarisation, riots in the streets fomented online, radicalisation in particular of young men and the massive threat to democracy posed by the disinformation that flows online particularly at election times. The other category we need to capture is scams. Scams are insidious. They are increasing and AI is turbocharging them. They come in the form of romance scams or networking scams where relationships are built and people are drifted towards crypto scams, where they are carved out of their entire wealth and that of those around them in a clinical and almost corporate way. The solutions we come up with need to address these harms. We need to make these products safe. If they are not safe, they should not be on the market in the first place. I referenced addiction. It is a key part of the business model. The algorithms driving social media and informing what we see on our screens are designed right now - they were not always - - to keep our eyes on the screen and they are boosted by the AI technology that underpins them. Age assurance and bans are one thing but they will not fix everything and there are major issues with them, which can be captured in a few different strands. They are privacy, where we are required to hand over official documentation, and rights, where they essentially block from online participation people who are expected to be cut off, and online is not all bad. They do not work as we have seen in Australia and France, for example, and they leave behind this cesspit of the internet that those of us who are not subject to the ban have to deal with. Therefore, while I welcome the announcements this week and while I hope fervently that the European Union has learned from how poor the ban in Australia has been, its inefficacy, and from the French experience where the courts have now challenged the mechanism of the ban, I have major concerns about how it will wash out, what the details will be and how it will be implemented. As far as I can see so far, those categories of harm will not be addressed by those bans.

I thank Deputy Gibney for raising this and for her clear articulation of the dangers and challenges we all have to deal with in how we respond and protect young people. Online safety, and particularly the protection of young people online, is crucial to all of us and is also a whole-of-government priority. It is timely that we are discussing this topic, given the developments at EU level which have been moving in recent times, particularly this week with President von der Leyen's address and outline of the European Commission's approach and the publication of the proposal for a new EU regulation, entitled the EU KIDS Act. The proposal addresses child safety online in two main ways. First, it will introduce a graduated approach to access to social media for children. Children under 13 will not have access to social media, with some very limited exceptions for child-friendly services. Children aged between 13 and 15 may have mini accounts, set up by parents or guardians with only age appropriate content and children over 15 may have autonomous accounts. Second, it will introduce new obligations on social media that prohibit design features such as infinite scroll and push notification during sleeping hours. The proposal will also introduce new obligations on more than just social media. It will also apply to online video games, Al companions and chatbots. Now that the Commission’s proposal has been published, the discussions will move to the Council and the European Parliament. As online safety of children and young people is a priority for Ireland's EU Presidency, we will give priority to those negotiations. Ensuring online safety regulation is up to date and fit for purpose means that this will continue to be an evolving area. Moreover, given the breadth of online safety, it requires a variety of approaches. The European Commission is preparing proposals to amend the audiovisual and media services directive, which are expected to include new measures on content, including harmful content. President von der Leyen also announced yesterday that a proposal for a new digital fairness Act will issue this autumn. This is due to include important new online consumer protections. As with the EU KIDS Act, the Irish Presidency will give priority to the negotiations on these safety proposals as they emerge. We have also seen developments in the USA, where platforms have settled cases. We are clear that any improvements to child safety that can be made in other jurisdictions must be implemented in the EU, including Ireland, too. Once today’s proposals take effect, together with existing regulation, we will have secured that and even gone further. I thank Deputy Gibney for raising it. This is something we will continue to seek to progress through the remainder of our Presidency. As we said from the outset, the Government's objective is to do this collectively, working at EU level because we believe that is the way to have the most impact on the protection of children and in the implementability of regulations

I thank the Minister of State for the response. The first issue I have with it is the focus on age. I raised today the topic of online safety, not online safety for children. I appreciate that, as legislators, we have a particular role to play in protecting people who cannot protect themselves as well as everyone else but if we only talk about blocking children and making things safe for children, we are not addressing online safety, because everyone else still has to deal with it. Let us talk about age assurance and bans. One of the groups in society that has digital literacy challenges that are unique from those of everyone else is older people. At some stage will we see bans for older people? What do we think about that in terms of the right to online participation and so on? The focus on age is wrong because it does not deal with the tools and the addictive nature of the tools. In all the things the Minister of State listed - and I appreciate the detail and I look forward to the detail coming out - algorithms are not mentioned. Yet, we are blue in the face on this side of the House telling the Government to fix the algorithms because they are the thing that will get closest to the business model. One of the main issues with the proposals put forward by the EU is privacy. We will all have to hand over official documentation to enforce these bans and I am not assured by the methods people are talking about because people will essentially be handing over official documentation to states, private companies or third parties, all of which involve a raft of privacy issues. I could go on but the main issue I have is that there is corporate capture in Brussels and Dublin, which means all these beautiful shiny rules that are set out - these directives, proposals and ideas - have for years all promised to do the same thing, fix these issues and address online safety. Yet, they are carved out by the time they ever reach the end of the process and then they are simply not enforced. The Government needs to take on big tech in Dublin and in Europe and we need to actually fix these issues, because nothing I heard gives me the comfort and feeling of safety we need to provide to the people who are calling me every day at their wits' end because of what their children are experiencing online, and what we are all experiencing online.

I thank the Deputy. I outlined clearly in my initial response the progress we have seen. While we all agree appropriate safeguards and rails are needed given the impact social media can have on, and the dangers it poses to, society generally, a key priority for all of us has to be the protection of young people and vulnerable people, particularly children in relation to what they are experiencing as the first generation and as they grow up. Collectively, at European level, driven by the Irish Presidency of the EU, we have seen progress on that, in the announcements this week which I outlined earlier. There is no doubt, and as we have all seen, social media and the type of activity we have seen on it is affecting society in terms of behaviours and radicalisation of people. We all have to be open in considering how to address that and how to ensure the space is regulated in a way that serves society well. The Government is open to engaging and discussing that and trying to find an appropriate way forward. Key to that is having debates and discussions, such as the one Deputy Gibney is having today with the points she raised on the floor of the Dáil. We will continue to engage with her and across the Oireachtas on how we can address this important issue.