Social media platforms are "making a profit" from the “damage they are doing" to childrens' welfare, a teacher has claimed.

Parents from more than 30 primary and secondary schools in South Dublin have come together to attend events which are focused on safeguarding children online.

One event entitled ‘Help Protect Your Children Online’ involved leading experts from Child Protection education and politics discussing the urgent need for stronger online protection legislation.

Teacher and assistant principal Eoghan Cleary was a keynote speaker of the Gen Free: Free To Be Kids campaign and is one of the individuals calling for immediate legislation.

Damage to children's welfare

The teacher agreed that fighting this issue is akin to pushing a boulder up a steep hill.

“This is a fight that we're having against the biggest conglomerates and corporations in the world,” he told The Pat Kenny Show.

“[They] have absolutely no interest in the welfare of our children, only want to make profit and are currently making profit at the cost of the damage that they're doing to our children's welfare.

“We need Governments to do something about it.

“I suppose until Governments do something about it, we're trying to encourage and support parents to delay their children getting access to the online world or, more importantly, delaying the online world getting access to their children until those regulations are put in place.”

A child sits in front of a laptop screen. Image: Alamy

Mr Cleary said he wants to be clear that the purpose of this legislation isn’t to deprive children of accessing the internet.

“It's making a safe online environment for children to engage on online,” he said.

“I mean, we know that online interaction for children can be fantastic in terms of the creativity it allows them, the education, the access to engage with their rights.

“It's just about making sure that when they do go online there are restrictions in place and regulation in place.

“So they don't get exposed to things like pornography, extremely violent content, unsolicited contact by strangers, predatory activities by adults, inappropriate messaging on their health and wellbeing, disinformation, misinformation, bullying.

“All the features of the addiction based model that these companies are using to hook kids into their products.”

Technical solutions

Right now, there aren't technical solutions to child safeguarding on the internet that are available to the public, Mr Cleary said.

However, he believes there are technical solutions currently in existence that could work if the issue was given the correct attention.

“I mean, we've managed to regulate the gambling industry, we've managed to regulate the banking industry,” he said.

“If we can do that for the entire population of the planet, we can definitely create online safe spaces for children to be able to interact on.

“The problem is that there just isn't the impetus there, that the companies aren't motivated to do it.

“Because even though, and this is really important to say, even though, the companies say that nobody under the age of 13 is using their social media platforms, because of Cyber Safe Kids report, we know that 82% of eight to 12 year olds in Ireland have their own social media profile.

“We know that in America, in 2022 alone, those social media companies made over 2-billion from ad revenue targeted at under 12.

“So, they know that children are using them but they're not doing anything about it.”

Young girl using smartphone attached to selfie stick to film content for her online accounts. Image: Alamy

Mr Clearly thinks we have “got to make the platforms responsible” for what happens on them.

“I don't know if everybody's aware of that at the moment, but like right now, the crimes that are being perpetrated against children, you know, in my school every day online, there's nobody being held accountable for them,” he said.

“Because there is a loophole where tech companies are not responsible for what happens between children to anybody on their platforms.

“Now that was done to try and innovate at the very beginning of the internet but we didn't realise at that stage that 30% of internet users were going to be children.

“Now that we do know that, we absolutely have to make the internet a safe space for those children.

Mr Cleary said legislation must be passed to make the tech companies criminally responsible for the crimes that “they are facilitating”.

A child with a smartphone, 01-05-2020. Image: SOPA Images/SIPA USA/PA Images