Irish Examiner view: How do we protect our children?

Yes, parents must set and police boundaries. Governments must make those boundaries clear. But neither can succeed if big tech firms profiting from children’s attention are allowed to decide how the rules apply to them. Stock picture: Alamy

The debate over children’s access to social media has moved beyond whether something should be done. The harder questions are what restrictions will work, who will enforce them, and what happens when the world’s most powerful tech companies refuse to play ball?

The European Commission’s proposed Keeping Internet Digital Spaces Accountable and Trustworthy (Kids) Act represents an ambitious attempt to answer them. Children under 13 would be prohibited from accessing social media, older teenagers would have graduated access, while platforms would face “safe design” obligations intended to protect younger users from addictive and harmful features.

There is logic to a graduated approach. A 17-year-old is plainly not the same as a 10-year-old, and legislation should recognise that distinction. But there is also a danger that a graduated approach becomes a diluted one.

Parents will always bear primary responsibility for their children’s relationship with smartphones and social media. No regulation can substitute for boundaries established at home, conversations about online behaviour, or parents knowing what their children are doing. But parents also need help. They are trying to establish boundaries against some of the world’s richest and most sophisticated companies, whose products are designed to compete relentlessly for attention.

Telling parents that responsibility ultimately rests with them is true. Pretending that makes it an equal contest is not. Australia provides an instructive example. Its restrictions for under-16s came into force last December, and millions of accounts have since been removed, deactivated, or restricted.

Yet Australia’s experience has also demonstrated that legislation is merely the beginning. Its government has since sought stronger information-gathering powers for the regulator and substantially increased penalties for breaches.

That gets to the heart of Europe’s challenge. Where is the big stick? Age limits, parental consent, and “safe design” will mean little if companies regard penalties as another manageable cost of doing business. Rules need credible enforcement, regulators need the resources and powers to investigate compliance, and sanctions must be substantial enough to change corporate behaviour. Otherwise, responsibility begins an all-too-familiar journey downwards.

Governments establish principles, platforms introduce safeguards, and, when those safeguards fail, individual parents discover that they remain responsible for enforcing the system at the kitchen table. Nor should smartphones themselves disappear from this conversation. Social media is perhaps the most obvious manifestation of a digital environment that has transformed childhood, but it is not the entirety of it.

Parents need coherent guidance rather than an expanding maze of age limits, qualifications, and exceptions. The EU is right to recognise that children’s online safety cannot simply be outsourced to families. Parents must set and police boundaries. Governments must make those boundaries clear. But neither can succeed if companies profiting from children’s attention are allowed to decide how seriously the rules apply to them. The success of the Kids Act will be measured not by the restrictions it creates, but by its willingness to enforce them.

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Attack on Michael Healy-Rae

There should be nothing remarkable about seeing an Irish politician walking down a street, attending a match or agricultural show, or sitting in traffic without a security detail. It is one of the healthier characteristics of our democracy. That makes events involving two senior politicians this week particularly troubling.

A man in his 60s has been charged following an alleged incident involving Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the National Ploughing Championships. Separately, Michael Healy-Rae required hospital treatment and stitches after being assaulted while his car was stopped in Dublin traffic.

Two incidents do not establish a trend, and should not be used to exaggerate the dangers faced by those in public life. But they provide an opportunity to reaffirm a boundary that should require little explanation.

Politics is, at its core, disagreement. Politicians should expect criticism, protest, heckling, and anger. Those who exercise power cannot expect insulation from the consequences of their decisions or from citizens expressing their opposition.

Physical violence and intimidation are different. Irish politicians remain unusually accessible to those they represent. They attend clinics, knock on doors, and encounter constituents in supermarkets, pubs, sports grounds, and agricultural shows. That proximity can produce uncomfortable exchanges. It is also an important democratic asset.

It would be a significant loss if barriers, security, and suspicion gradually came to replace it. A healthy democracy does not require us to like our politicians, agree with them, or treat them deferentially. It does require that political arguments remain arguments.

Whatever our disagreements, nobody should want an Ireland in which elected representatives fear the ordinary accessibility that has long distinguished our political culture.

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Bonnie Greer was a champion of civility

Bonnie Greer, who has died aged 77, possessed a quality increasingly difficult to find in public life: The ability to hold strong convictions without surrendering curiosity. Born in Chicago and resident in Britain from 1986, Greer ranged across theatre, literature, broadcasting, and public debate, becoming one of Britain’s most distinctive cultural voices.

Ireland acquired a particular affection for this sometimes-described “honorary Irish woman”, not least following her interventions during the Brexit years. Yet Greer’s lasting example may lie in how she disagreed.

Her celebrated encounter with BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time demonstrated that trenchant opposition need not require theatrical outrage. Greer could be formidable without losing generosity, serious without losing humour, and certain without ceasing to be curious.

At a time when public debate increasingly rewards certainty, outrage, and performance, those are qualities worth remembering. Public discourse is poorer for the loss of such a voice.