They want to ban Snapchat for kids, but porn sites are fine?
This being a work laptop, it struck me that our IT department may raise an eyebrow if they ever happened upon this wholly innocent query - purely done for research purposes.
So I hastily asked my more tech-savvy family how to delete my browser history. They were very curious as to why I wanted to do so!
Anyway, the result came back that, in July, a porn website was the 21st most visited in Ireland, just behind RIP.ie (which is surely the cue-up for a neat joke, but I want to be serious here).
Which is all well and good in a free and open-minded world, so long as no laws are being broken.
But what if I told you that porn websites can easily be viewed by anyone of any age? Even very young children?
Even worse, what if I told you that global studies have shown that 15% of people have seen porn online before the age of nine? And three-quarters have seen it by the age of 15?
You would say we had a serious problem.
Which is why I was truly amazed when Health Minister Stephen Donnelly recently announced he wanted a crackdown on the perils of children accessing the internet, but he didn’t have the porn sites in mind.
The Irish Medical Organisation went even further, and proposed a complete ban on smartphones for under-16s. This all came after Education Minister Norma Foley said she plans to ask second-level schools to ban the use of mobile phones by students during the school day. It is good that the authorities are finally waking up to the threat caused by unfettered access to the online world for our children - a threat many in the media, including myself, have long warned about.
But I would seriously question their first target in the war on the perils of the internet.
A ban on social media for under 16s seems unworkable - and how on earth would it be policed?
We have a Government that seems ever-keen to draft in new laws, while the public are crying out for the current ones to be policed properly.
An outright ban on smartphones, and specifically social media, also sounds Draconian, when they have a role to play in education and uniting communities and sports group, as well as being a vital social network among young people.
But my big issue is that we have politicians suddenly calling for a ban on social media for children, when porn websites remain accessible to them. What sort of skewed priority is that?
If Stephen Donnelly believes Snapchat and Instagram are causing a “public health emergency” for our young people, what on earth effect does he think access to porn is doing?
Well, I can give him one example.
Last year, a judge called for greater restrictions to prevent children accessing pornography as she sentenced a young teenage boy to 18 months’ detention for the sexual assault of a young woman walking home alone in Cork.
Judge Catherine Staines said one disturbing element of the case was that the boy, who was 13 at the time, had been accessing pornography on his phone from the age of 11.
“It is shocking that this is available to vulnerable, impressionable young people,” she said. “Clearly companies are making vast sums of money from selling pornographic material.
“More rigorous restrictions should be placed on them to prevent this harmful material being available to young children.”
That didn’t prompt swift action from the Government at the time, and, frankly, I don’t know what will.
As recently as July, Justice Minister Helen McEntee, warned in a Dáil debate: “We have moved into a phase in which young people have access to violence and violent pornography at the touch of a button on their phones.”
Doesn’t that concern her enough to ban its presence among children?
Bizarrely, a Bill requiring that access to pornographic material online be subject to an age-verification requirement has met with opposition from the Government.
The Bill, proposed by conservative Senator Ronan Mullen, with support from three Independent senators and three Fianna Fáil senators, would place an obligation on website controllers and app store services to have child locks in place.
However, in July, Media Minister Catherine Martin told the Seanad there were a “number of significant legal and technical issues” with the Bill, and it would be incompatible with EU law.
“It is my view that by participating in a unified and coherent EU approach, as Ireland is doing, and working with the European Commission, we will bring all the platforms to account, and we will achieve the aim of protecting our children from age-inappropriate content,” she said.
Yes, but when will that happen?
Senator Mullen spoke of his fears of “EU bureaucracy becoming the enemy of child protection” and it’s hard to disagree with that.
When you see the type of country that bans websites, and even the internet outright - the likes of Russia and China - it does give pause for thought about bringing in controls here. But surely a workable ban on under 16s accessing porn cannot be beyond our grasp?
It already seems to have been done across the pond.
In March, Florida joined seven other U.S states in blocking millions of people from accessing Pornhub’s adult video site unless they can prove they are at least 18 years old.
Here in Ireland, it looks like we will have to wait an eternity for the EU to act as one bloc to protect our children.
Meanwhile, we seem to be able to pursue a policy of banning social media for under 16s.
Make it make sense.
App?
