Govt urged to enforce existing child social media laws

The government doesn't have to wait on new European Union legislation in order to make children safer online, an expert has said.

Noeline Blackwell, Online Safety Coordinator with the Children's Rights Alliance, told RTÉ Radio 1's This Week that there are already laws in place that could be used to protect children who use social media if they were enforced.

"We have a lot of law already, it has to be a question of actually implementing that, of the companies taking notice of it, of our regulators at Irish and at EU level," she said.

Some of the biggest tech companies that have social media arms are headquartered in Ireland including Meta, which owns Instagram and TikTok. However, other social media companies, such as SnapChat, are located elsewhere in Europe.

Ms Blackwell said that a whole-of-Europe approach is needed.

"If we can get the European Union as a whole to say. within the European Union, if you want to deploy your products, you have to make them safer and that could be done on the existing legislation.

"The European Commission has already identified that Meta products, Facebook and Instagram are at risk of addiction and that people are able to access them too young. Same with TikTok," she said.

She added: "These are preliminary findings by the EU Commission. There should be a time limit on the time the company has to reply, and they should fix it more quickly."

Ms Blackwell said that President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has recognised that European children are at risk of harm online and that the EU is not doing enough. Ms Blackwell has welcomed the proposals announced last month by Ms von der Leyen for the EU Kids act.

The proposed legislation includes an outright ban on social media use for under-13s, limited use for under-15s, and that social media apps will be safer by design

Read more:
Kids and social media: what would change under new EU law

"As the moment, the tech industry is allowed to deploy unsafe products in the European Union," Ms Blackwell said.

"So, this thing where they have to actually show that they're safe in advance is important and it's also switching the responsibility from the children to identify or indeed their parents to the tech companies."

She added that regulations on gaming and AI companions also need to be included in the proposed legislation

"It is clear now at political level, at European political level, that more needs to be done to require the tech industry, which is massive, to do something to make the internet safe."

"Children and young people are living in a digital environment.

"They have to have access to that environment.

"Social media is part of their information and their connection... social media can be good, but where it is being abused, where the recommender systems are leading towards abuse of children.

"That should not happen."

Teens In Newcastle West have their say

In a Foróige group in Newcastle West, teenagers said they all began to use social media before the age of 13 - the minimum age required to use many of the most popular social media apps including TikTok, SnapChat and Instagram.

However, several of the teens that spoke to RTÉ's This Week said they regretted starting so young.

15-year-old Lyla said she understood why politicians are worried about how teenagers are using social media.

"It is dangerous and people can get harassed, bullied," she said.

She added it can also be easy to be unsafe online and reveal something personal to the public.

16-year-old Kamilla said she lost a friend to suicide after he was "heavily cyber bullied".

"I do understand their [politicians] concerns about social media as it ends lives, ruins lives and just creates insecurities."

Kairan said he has noticed that social media can promote harmful stereotypes, as well as racism, sexism and homophobia.

"I do find that it can very much desensitise people in certain areas," he said.

"For example, there can be a lot of cases where someone can die or something can happen to someone and the comments in the video will just be full of jokes."

Group leader at Foróige in Newcastle West, Nicole McCarthy told This Week that she had seen the harmful impacts of social media spill out into real life of teenagers.

"16-year-old boys are seeing a lot of misogynistic content, whereas teenage girls are seeing actually a lot of 'Get Ready With Me' me videos which are just as harmful," she said.

"[Teenagers] do typically stop to watch it I think just out of curiosity but then they end up seeing more of the same negative damaging things."

Ms McCarthy, who is also a secondary school teacher, said she has overheard cruel comments made by teenagers about their peers, especially if someone doesn't fit a perceived beauty standard.

"The kids will laugh because they see it on social media that it's not cool to look like that," she explained.

"It's just very concerning," she added.

"There's a lot I think that social media platforms can do to prevent these things getting to these kids.

"It's not just kids feeling sad, it is kids ending their lives because of content online and bullying.

"I think the government also, they need to be looking at protecting young people as a whole.

"There should be no child accessing content online that's going to make them want to hurt themselves or other people but it's happening every day."

The manosphere and tradwives

The Irish government has said it is specifically concerned about young people interacting with social media content that perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes such as the tradwife and manosphere trends.

This is part of the National Strategy for Women and Girls, led by the Department of Children, Disability and Equality, has the vision of an "Ireland where women and girls can thrive in a gender-equal society".

Although the teenagers at Foróige were aware of tradwife and manosphere, they said they didn't interact with those posts a lot.

Kairan said that although he knows what manosphere is, he most commonly sees it on social media when it is someone is making fun of the trend.

Lyla said she has heard and seen harmful things in school that she suspects comes from teenage boys looking at manosphere content, although she found it hard to think of a specific example.

"Sometimes in the way they act, just the way they talk, even sometimes homophobia, I hear a lot about that in school."

She added: "I can definitely see how the rise of tradwife and the manosphere, those creators and then maybe a change or shift in just the way I hear or see people act."

Corrinne Hassan, executive director of the National Women's Council of Ireland has welcomed the strategy for Women and Girls outlined by the government, including a planned awareness campaign about the harms of gendered stereotypes.

"We don't have gender equality in our society, and I think, unfortunately, some of these gender stereotypes [seen on social media] has really exasperated that gap.

"The manosphere content is on social media, it's been amplified through these algorithms, which are in a way designed to really maximise your engagement in social media.

"So, if a user interacts with a post or a video that has a sexist view or jokes about women, the algorithm will continue to show similar content.

"And then they fall into these echo chambers that normalise this harmful view in women on feminism and on gender equality.

"For young people, we're doing them a disservice by not trying our best to be able to protect them from the harms of everything that is on social media."

Recommender algorithms

Social media can also promote good things. 15-year-old Alicia said tutorials on her "for you" page on social media had encouraged her to take up origami.

What she needs, she said, is better protection.

"Parents getting more involved and maybe even the government kind of checking apps somehow.

"Just kind of putting restrictions on it, making it safer for younger people, taking down content that isn't safe for younger people to see."

Several of the teenagers said that parents should have a more active role in monitoring their kids' social media use.

For Lyla, who said she can spend hours on her phone after school and then regrets all the time she's spent on social media, she said she'd like the apps to be less addictive.

"There definitely could be something to make it less addictive, just not sure what that would be," she said.

"There needs to be a lot more in place so that It's actually stuck. that children can have accounts that are for adults or older teenagers, just that it's actually enforced and that maybe more care went into the removal of unsafe or harmful content from apps."

Ms Hasson said that the Women's Council members are coming across the terms manosphere and trad wife "especially in the violence against women space".

She worries that the trends are beginning to shape national conversations around feminism and masculinity.

"The demographics show that roughly around 69-75% of boys aged 11 to 17 regularly encounter that algorithm manosphere or the digital masculinity content," Ms Hasson said.

The National Women's Council would like to see to turn off or disable engagement-based social media recommender systems.

"We're really asking for the companies to be held to account," Ms Hasson said.

"A really important first step is to really look at the tech companies.

"If we don't tackle them, this content still gets to spread online and young people still get to see it."