Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I commend the motion to the House. It is very important. I am a parent of four children. My twins are seven and the other children are 13 and 14. This is the biggest issue in our household by a country mile. How do we police this space? How do we involve everyone in it? How can we have an appropriate environment so people have an active lifestyle and engage with digital technology if they need to do so?

There is good and bad in the issue itself. In my household, one of our children is dyslexic and the benefits of technology for a child with dyslexia are very much welcomed. The ability of technology to help people read and get the information required is very much there. Slowly but surely as they go through the education system, it makes the lives of those who are dyslexic very easy. It is something we need to promote regarding the benefits of technology. On the other side, there are major drawbacks. Access to mobile phones and how it affects family life is a big issue. The reports and studies we have seen show that 24% of six-year-olds have their own mobile phone devices, or a smartphone to make it even worse. This is a frightening statistic. As a parent I am genuinely worried about this statistic.

We need to help parents. This is about helping the parents along this road. It is now the case that when Holy Communion comes along that children get the mobile phones. Two or three years ago it was confirmation but now when they are in second class, they are all getting a mobile smartphone device. There is peer pressure on the families to get involved in this debate. If the majority of children in second class are getting mobile phones and you are the outlier, it puts exceptional pressure on the family.

We need to do more to help families to deal with the issue of when the mobile phone becomes a part of the routine of life. I fundamentally believe we need to push this out as far as we can. First year or second year of secondary school is probably the appropriate time we need to look at this. We do not need mobile phone ownership in primary schools. This is where we are at present. The majority of children in primary school have a mobile phone. If we had an age in the law, such as 13, it would be a baseline. It would become a standard whereby parents could say they will not break the law for their children and they will not be in this situation. It is about helping the parent in this argument. It is a ferocious argument. It is nothing more than peer pressure, starting with the children and working its way to the parent.

It is not about the actual smartphone any more; it is now about the type of smartphone the parent will potentially get for the child.We have children in primary school with a smartphone that is worth, let us be honest, a four-figure sum. That is the reality of what is happening. Parents are struggling in this bizarre environment that has appeared in the past four or five years. We are not on about the famous Nokia 3210 from back in the day. It is anything but. We are on about a number of a mobile phone that costs a four-figure sum.

I fundamentally believe the age is important because it helps the parent. It gives the parents the baseline that is required to say he or she will not cross that line and then it will become the norm that a child does not get a phone until he or she is 13. As a parent of four children, I fundamentally believe it is the most important thing that we could possibly do.

In the digital space we live in today, the idea that one's child potentially could be up in the bedroom on a phone seeing images that are inappropriate and engaging with people from God knows where, is frightening. I always look at this from the perspective of asking whether one would leave one's seven or eight-yea- old go down town and not know where he or she was going, who he or she was meeting or what he or she was doing. Would one, however, leave him or her in the bedroom with a phone unattended? That is what is happening in society today. It is a frightening issue that we need to try to engage with. I fundamentally believe parents want help here. They want help from the Government to make sure we can get on the right side of this argument and the right side of the argument for me is the age.

My household struggles all the way through. My lads are tough men. Denis and John, who are seven, cannot get out of bed five days a week because they do not want to go to school. On Saturdays, however, they are allowed technology and they are up at 6 a.m. That is how they operate. We need to find a formula that can help them. To me, age is very important here. It is the key aspect in this entire matter.

The other issue is social media accounts. Social media accounts are there for one reason and one reason only, namely, to make money for the social media companies. We need to make sure that the social media account verification will be 16 or 16 plus because we need to make sure children do not become part of algorithms that could have a huge impact on their social life. The mental strain being put on children because of the amount of content they are seeing is frightening. I see it at home every day of the week. I see the whole idea of the scrolling, the addictive nature of it and how it can have a massive impact on families. We need to put a baseline on this also. The baseline has to be towards the age of 16. It has to be because it gives people the opportunity to breathe. The idea now about one going out in the back garden and playing just does not occur because they fundamentally want to go scrolling or rolling down the phone. That does not help the family environment and I am fundamentally concerned about how society will be in the next decade unless we get to grips with this problems that has emerged in the past few years.