Report from CyberSafeKids, shows social media companies have been shockingly unresponsive as parents fight to protect their children.
Midlands-North-West MEP Maria Walsh has slammed the inaction by social media companies over the removal of harmful content, particularly in the context of content relating to children. Walsh was responding to a report published yesterday morning by Irish charity CyberSafeKids, which details appalling examples of social media companies being unresponsive when parents have tried to get harmful content removed from sites.
MEP Walsh, who authored the European Parliament’s first report around mental health this summer, said we have a duty to protect our children from any online behaviour which causes them distress or harm. She is calling for immediate action here in Ireland and indeed across the European Union, to compel social media companies to instantly respond and engage with parents in their efforts to have distressing material removed.
“Social media has lots of great benefits, but sadly it has a dark side too. It is one thing to try to ignore a bully in the playground, but social media enables a bully to follow a child everywhere. We need to protect our young people, and particularly our children, from harmful content and from online bullying. When a parent or guardian raises a concern on behalf of their child, it needs immediate action. According to the CyberSafeKids report, that’s not the case at the moment and that’s simply not acceptable on any level,” she stressed.
CyberSafeKids report for 2021, which studied the online antics of children revealed that, over a quarter of kids (26% ) have seen of experienced something online that bothered them. 29% of that cohort of children then kept the upsetting thing to themselves rather than report it to their parents or someone else.
The report also exposed that existing age restrictions are “not working and are relatively easy to bypass for a determined child.” The report also states that “the overall percentage of children who had experienced some sort of bullying online was 28%,” with 57% of teachers surveyed having had to deal with cyber bullying through the school year.
The full CyberSafeKids report for 2021 can be viewed on www.cybersafekids.ie
