€1m taskforce to tackle harm caused to children by online activity

The taskforce, which is expected to deliver its first report in six months, will be given €1m in funding annually towards a yearly public awareness campaign. File picture

A €1m taskforce has been launched with the aim of informing parents of the full “extent of the harms their children are being exposed to” online.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly criticised the various social media platforms at the launch of the initiative on Wednesday, saying the time “for asking them to cooperate” is over.

The online health taskforce is to develop a public health response to the “harms and mental health harms caused to children and young people by certain types of online activity”.

Chaired by children’s rights advocate Jillian van Turnhout, the Department of Health said it has been established due to the “growing body of evidence” internationally linking online activity and harms including anxiety, sleep deprivation, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidal ideation.

The taskforce, which is expected to deliver its first report in six months, will be given €1m in funding annually towards a yearly public awareness campaign.

The membership of the grouping, together with Ms van Turnhout, will include the interim chief medical officer Professor Mary Horgan, online safety commissioner with Coimisiún na Meán Niamh Hodnett; chief executive of CyberSafe Kids Alex Cooney; and professor of digital media at DCU Debbie Ging.

Mr Donnelly said the issue of online safety has already been broached in two new pieces of legislation  — the Digital Services and Online Safety and Media Regulation Acts — and the creation of the multi-million-funded media regulator Coimisiún na Meán.

The minister said that in his opinion it is no longer sufficient for platforms to be pursued legally for any alleged harms they may cause, and that senior executives now need to be held to account. File picture

Nevertheless, he said that given the scale of the threat of online abuse, the taskforce is justified as there is a need for a whole-of-Government approach to the problem.

The minister said of the various social media firms and their role in protecting children: “Rather than asking the online platforms if they wouldn’t mind making their products safe for children, now is the time for us to say 'we have more than enough evidence at this point to know that your products are causing widespread harm to children'.”

Mr Donnelly said those platforms must make their portals “safe very quickly” or risk being held “accountable for the harms” they are causing.

He said the taskforce is an acknowledgement that “parents can’t be expected to cope with [the spread of abusive behaviour online] alone”, adding that it will “provide a detailed description of the range of social, mental, physical, and sexual health harms being caused to young people” by certain online behaviours.

Mr Donnelly cited the recent example he had been shown of a Snapchat account created in the guise of a 12-year-old girl “interested in camogie and ponies”, which “within minutes” was showing the user “content of boyfriend and girlfriend, and the guy grabbing the girl and shaking her very, very aggressively”.

“It takes minutes from the creation of one of these accounts to get into the glorification of self-harm, depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicide,” he said.

The minister said that in his opinion it is no longer sufficient for platforms to be pursued legally for any alleged harms they may cause, and that senior executives now need to be held to account.

“The idea that Snapchat or TikTok or any of these can say ‘we are knowingly directing this content at children, but we have no responsibility’, that is a nonsense,” he added.