Children’s access to porn should be ‘urgently addressed’, warns Irish group

Children’s easy access to pornography should be ‘urgently addressed’, an online safety group has warned.

Alex Cooney, CEO of CyberSafeKids in the Republic of Ireland, quoted studies showing that half of 11 to 16-year-olds have watched pornography.

She said: “We are talking about a whole generation of kids getting a distorted view of what a relationship should look like. That is deeply concerning for all parents. There’s a real urgency to address this.”

Effects

Cooney explained: “We have children every day accessing stuff they shouldn’t and sometimes sharing it with other children. We have no real sense of how that is going to shape their minds, their expectations and their behaviours.”

She continued: “What we can categorically say is that we do not want children having access to pornography.”

The CEO made her comments following the Irish Government’s publication of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill, which intends to target “harmful online content”. The Bill has completed its First Stage in the Seanad Éireann.

Age checks

In the UK, Westminster’s draft Online Safety Bill – which also purports to tackle “harmful content” – does not include mandatory age verification checks for pornography websites.

Age verification checks were approved under the Digital Economy Act 2017, but plans to implement them were abandoned in October 2019.