An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-28
============================================================

Ollie Crowe (FF), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I raise the issue of social media, and in particular the impact it is having on our children. A submission from senior UK doctors at the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges outlined their views. In terms of risks to health, social media ranks alongside smoking. The academy surveyed 132 doctors, more than half of whom saw at least one case of health harm that could be related to tech and devices every week. Over one third saw evidence of harm multiple times per week.
Online safety has been highlighted by Ministers as a matter that will be at the forefront of our EU Presidency. These findings only further make clear the need for action. It would be ideal if we could find a common consensus with our EU counterparts on the issue and agree the best way to limit the impact of social media on our children. However, if common ground cannot be found, we should be ready to take action on our own, and I encourage the Government to do so. When senior doctors are comparing it, in risk terms, to smoking, it hits home how dangerous it is to allow often unlimited access to social media for our children. It would be of benefit to have a longer discussion in this House. I would be grateful if the Leader would invite the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, to join us to discuss the issue in the weeks ahead.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:01+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-28