The first Online Safety Monitor was launched today at an online safety conference hosted by the Children’s Rights Alliance. The conference featured addresses from Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan and David D’Arcy, Digital Services Act Officer for Ireland at the European Commission office in Dublin. At a crunch point with new regulation of online platforms, the Online Safety Monitor provides a baseline analysis of the protections in place and the areas where children in Ireland remain vulnerable online.
“If laws and regulations fail to keep pace with the digital world, it is children and young people who pay the price. Failing to have adequate protections online creates space for predators to hide,” said Noeline Blackwell, Online Safety Coordinator with the Children’s Rights Alliance.
The Online Safety Monitor marks a unique and comprehensive analysis of the current state of children’s online rights; outlining key recommendations across three thematic areas in a single document and laying the groundwork for ongoing monitoring as these rights continue to evolve.
The Online Safety Monitor calls on the Government to:
- Establish an effective and accessible Public Individual Complaints Mechanism where complaints made by children or involving a child are given priority
- Strengthen oversight of platform compliance with the Digital Services Act to ensure accountability mechanisms are effective and child-centred, and include safety-by-design, transparency, privacy and algorithms
- Lead reform of EU Laws that combat the production, hosting, access and use of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and ensure these laws properly address grooming, encryption, detection and secure storage of both new and existing CSAM
- Introduce targeted initiatives to raise awareness and increase understanding of online harms to children, focusing on child sexual abuse, CSAM, grooming, and sexual exploitation.
Ms. Blackwell continued:
“As we launch the Online Safety Monitor today, several platforms are under investigations in several jurisdictions because of the harms that occurred on their sites. We cannot trust platforms to decide and design their own safety rules for children. These platforms are inherently risky in their set-up, favouring profit over protection. While there have been significant strides in recent years to end this era of self-regulation, there are gaps that ultimately put children at risk.
In Ireland, there is huge public appetite for the Government to stand up to big tech and they have made a start. We have a new law, the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act, a dedicated Online Safety Commissioner and the introduction of legally binding Online Safety Codes. However, children are still being subjected to unnecessary levels of online harm.
The Online Safety Codes offer the first real chance to ensure there are significant consequences for platforms doing too little to safeguard children but in their current form, they give too much scope to platforms to determine their own safety standards. The recommender algorithms these companies designed that feed children harmful content are not included. On top of that, children and young people are still waiting for an accessible individual complaints mechanism that they can turn to when they do experience harms online. Leaving children and their families lost in a maze of complex and inconsistent reporting processes for every site they engage with.”
The Online Safety Monitor places a particular focus on the growing threat of online Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), calling for national and EU action to crackdown on the proliferation of this material.
Ms Blackwell concluded:
“The horrifying reality of an unregulated internet is children are left exposed online to the worst crimes and content you can imagine. Last year, it was estimated that over 300 million children globally were victims of online sexual exploitation. That is 10 cases every second. We have reached a grim milestone, and yet, EU regulation to address this has stalled.
Predators hide behind blind spots that current laws fail to acknowledge sufficiently, and online platforms ignore entirely, and all the while the industry profits rise. Reports of child sexual abuse material in Ireland have skyrocketed in recent years, with Hotline.ie receiving over 29,000 reports in 2023 – the highest number in its history. What should be enjoyable activities, such as chatting with friends online or playing video games, can open the door to some of the worst offences.
Online predators are skilled at identifying young internet users and are ready to exploit them, leading to children being exposed to, or in many cases, sharing their own, explicit content. Just a few minutes online at the wrong time, can have lasting impacts on children and young people beyond the screen including anxiety, depression, PTSD, and struggles with trust and self-esteem.
Despite occurring behind a screen, this is not a victimless crime, and it is not one that will disappear with a power off button. It is essential that our new Government make this an absolute priority and push for stronger EU laws and more effective ways to detect, remove, and prevent this content which has irreversible effects on countless children every minute.
There would be outrage if harms online happened offline, in our communities. Our government must step up to ensure our regulation is as robust and child-centred as possible, and that are significant penalties for platforms if they fail to comply. The online world is being shaped by digital technologies that are developing at a rapid rate. We cannot afford to wait and see what may happen if we don’t take action immediately.”
- The Online Safety Monitor is available here.
