Press release
Minister for Education Norma Foley TD hosts social media summit to discuss online safety for children and young people
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Published on
Last updated on
Minister for Education Norma Foley TD today (Wednesday) hosted a roundtable discussion with leaders and decision-makers of Ireland’s social media, technology and smartphone companies to progress work to help keep children and young people safe online.
The Minister welcomed attendees from companies including Meta, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Three, Vodafone and Tesco, representatives of IBEC, Oide (support service for teachers and school leaders) and Webwise and Department of Education officials at the Clock Tower at the Department on Marlborough Street.
Minister Foley discussed several issues, including the introduction of a robust age verification system to ensure that social media services are not used by children under the age of 13 and the attitude of mobile phone providers to her department’s smartphone policy.
Other topics included the effectiveness of controls in place to prevent access to harmful and inappropriate content, the risk of children being duped by adults impersonating other children into sending inappropriate images online, the potential harm caused by the use of filters on social media services, and the speed of takedown procedures.
The meeting follows Minister Foley’s launch last November of guidelines for primary school parents and parent associations who wished to create and implement voluntary codes around smartphone use among primary school children and builds on the commitments contained in Cineáltas: Action Plan on Bullying.
Minister Foley thanked all the companies and organisations who attended.
"I acknowledged the wonderful gift that technology, and social media in particular, can be for people. Social media services have enormous power but with that comes enormous responsibility and a duty of care to young people.
“We had a very constructive and a very robust engagement. I'm very conscious that social media services have an age limit of 13 in place but I know from engaging with parents and schools that there are children much younger than that using social media. We need to have a robust system of age verification put in place and I am heartened by the fact that Coimisiún na Mean is examining this matter in its draft online safety code.”
Minister Foley also asked the mobile phone service providers present if they supported the principle of parents not buying smartphones for their children while in primary school.
“That wasn't forthcoming at this point in time, but they gave a commitment to engage again on this matter. ” she said.
Minister Foley said that it was a priority of hers to support parents, teachers and school communities in their endeavours to help keep children and young people safe online. Several resources are available to support with this.
“I would also like to thank representatives of Webwise, who attended today’s meeting, for the wide range of information and advice they provide through their Internet Safety Programme, webinars and more. Teachers, parents and guardians who would like support to help them start conversations around online safety with children and young people can access Webwise support by visiting webwise.ie.”
Cineáltas: Action Plan on Bullying was published on 1st December 2022. Cineáltas is dedicated to the prevention and addressing of bullying, cyber bullying, racist bullying, gender identity bullying and sexual harassment, among other areas, in schools.
It is centred on a child right’s based approach and provides a collective vision and clear roadmap for how the whole education community and society can work together to prevent and address bullying in our schools.
Cineáltas contains a number of actions that relate to the area of online safety.
An Implementation Plan for Cineáltas was published on 10 April 2023 and commits to implementing each of the 61 actions contained in Cineáltas within a 5 year period.
Implementation of the actions in Cineáltas will help us all to work together towards a diverse, inclusive Irish society free from bullying in all its forms and where individual difference is valued and celebrated.
The Cineáltas Action Plan on Bullying can be read here: Cineáltas Action Plan on Bullying