News Story

Ireland’s media regulator wants the power to remove online services which do not meet “mandatory safety standards” restricting their access to children.

It is reported that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is considering announcing a plan to restrict minors’ use of social media next week.

Ireland’s media regulator Coimisiún na Meán (CnaM) said it wants online service providers to have “certificates of conformity” to show they meet certain standards on age-appropriate content and non-addictive design”.

It said services should otherwise be age-gated so they are only accessible to adults, adding that it wants enhanced powers to remove access to sites that are non-compliant.

Asked if he believed a restriction on social media for children was a good idea, CnaM executive chairman Jeremy Godfrey stopped short of an outright ban, but said: “Children deserve access to safe online spaces that provide them with an enriching experience that’s in line with their age and stage of development.”

He said the regulator was trying to deliver this through enforcement of the existing Online Safety Framework and investigations with the European Commission.

He said: “But we also think that the law could usefully be changed, and that the services which are not safe for children should be banned from being offered to children.

“And we think the best way to bring that about is to have mandatory safety standards for services that children are going to be offered.”

Asked if the regulator’s position was out of step with Government, he said “everyone wants the same thing” and An Coimisiún’s approach was to “ban services that have bad features”.

Mr Godfrey said the set of standards for children would address “addictive design features” such as infinite scrolling, video autoplay, and usage streaks.

He said: “Things like not permitting contact from unknown adults, like having having mandatory time limits and curfews, having easy to access parental controls, and also not allowing age-inappropriate content to be shown to children.”

He added: “We want to see certificates of conformity so that we know that before services offered to children, there’s some evidence they are safe for children.

“And that services that don’t meet those safety standards should have to be age-gated so that only adults can see them.

“We also think there should be enhanced compliance power so that if you do find services that aren’t safe for children, which are being offered for children, there needs to be powers to have those removed from the market, just as you do with unsafe toys.”

CnaM is also seeking “enhancements” of its powers around information gathering, with Mr Godfrey saying additional authority would help enforcement of any further rules drawing a comparison with consumer regulators being able to order unsafe products off the market.

Further asked if age-gating would work through enforcement or self-policing, Mr Godfrey told reporters companies would have to have “mechanisms in place” to adequately ensure children are not accessing inappropriate content.

He said “regulators would have to check the work” through monitoring and “mystery shopping”, further arguing that larger platforms “should not be marking their own homework” and should have independent verification that their systems are adequate.

Asked if the independent verification could be done by an existing body, Mr Godfrey said: “That’s something that needs some further discussion.”

Enforcement of further regulation will remain a difficulty, with CnaM digital services commissioner John Evans saying: “What it will come down to, I believe, at its core will be effective age assurance mechanisms being in place and we already have that as a challenge within the current regime.

“So the focus may change, but we are tooled up in the right way to deal with that.”

On Thursday, CnaM launched an Ireland-specific report as part of EU research into children’s online habits.

It found that 69% of children would prefer online safety education rather than a social media ban with almost half of parents and caregivers in agreement.

Parents/caregivers were more likely to agree (43%) than disagree (23%) that a ban would not be effective as children would circumvent it.

A significant proportion of children reported having had negative online experiences in the past year.

Almost one in 10 children reported receiving a sexual message at least once.

Reports of receiving sexual messages became more common during adolescence, with children aged 1617 substantially more likely (20%) than younger age groups (2% of children aged 9-11 and 6% of children aged 12-13) to report an occurrence.

One third of children and 46% of 16 to 17-year-olds felt upset about something they had experienced online at least once in the past year while 3% reported experiencing something online that upset them at least weekly.

The regulator said online aggression and cyberbullying affected a minority of children in the past year with face-to-face bullying more frequently reported than online aggression.