An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland

I welcome the UK Government's decision to embark on policies that will restrict access to social media for under-16s. My first hope, of course, is that the Irish Government will follow suit. There has been a lot of talk and hints, particularly from the Tánaiste in recent days, that Ireland might go in this direction as well. That would be welcome in itself but how it is done is as important as what is done.
There is a concern in some quarters that the Government, under the guise of acting in children's best interests, would seek to exert control and surveillance generally over people's access to the Internet, including social media. There is a concern, for example, about the proposals, to roll in a digital ID system. These issues should be kept completely separate. What is necessary is that there would be legislation putting requirements on tech companies restricting access to under-16s around the creation of social media accounts because it is primarily through the existence of social media accounts that young people can be targeted by strangers, addictive advertising and so on. This should not be about creating and requiring each person to have some sort of a digital identity before they can access social media.
However, we must recognise that social media is only one aspect of the problem facing young people in regard to Internet engagement. The toxic trio are, in fact, pornography, social media and video games. Video games in particular feed addictive tendencies and, again, involve young people being very often approached by strangers. Sooner or later, we have to move the conversation beyond the question of just the software to the hardware and ask the questions about whether, why and when young people should be enabled to have smartphones, including the question of whether it should be possible to legislate to prevent them being brought to school and so on. I would like a debate on all of these issues very soon with the relevant Minister.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-16