{"id":175897,"date":"2025-12-05T03:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/175897\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T03:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:51:09","slug":"plan-to-verify-ages-of-children-using-social-media-in-ireland-to-be-considered-by-cabinet-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/175897\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan to verify ages of children using social media in Ireland to be considered by Cabinet \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plans to verify the ages of children who use social media<\/a> as part of a wider move to set a digital age of consent will be considered shortly by Government. <\/p>\n

Minister for Media Patrick O\u2019Donovan<\/a> is to bring a memo to Cabinet in the coming weeks that will propose linking a child\u2019s age with their online MyGovID account as part of a plan to increase protection for children online. <\/p>\n

It comes as Instagram<\/a> and Facebook<\/a> have started shutting down social media accounts of children in Australia<\/a> believed to be under the age of 16, as the first age-based social media ban in the world comes into effect. <\/p>\n

On December 10th, Australia will become the first country to impose a strict social media ban for children under the age of 16.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Donovan said he and his Department met representatives of the Australian<\/a> government in recent weeks to discuss its ban.<\/p>\n

Australia is not subject to the same digital services regulations that apply to EU member states including Ireland, he said.<\/p>\n

\"MinisterMinister for Media Patrick O’Donovan. Photograph: Sam Boal\/Collins <\/p>\n

Speaking at Dublin Airport on Thursday in advance of a trip to the European Council, Mr O\u2019Donovan said he hoped to bring a memo to Government \u201cbefore Christmas\u201d around the \u201cdigital age of consent and age verification\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, this is the obvious starting point,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The Government is planning to make online child safety a key theme of Ireland\u2019s presidency of the Council of the European Union<\/a> in the second half of 2026. <\/p>\n

While Government believes online child protection would be more effective when decided at a European level, it is also trying to bring forward its own domestic legislation to protect children on social media. <\/p>\n

The Minister said that, as a parent and a teacher, he was \u201cvery concerned about the appropriateness of what some children are seeing online\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Donovan said that \u201cin an ideal world\u201d it would be better for the European Union to act in unison on the issue of online child safety, but the EU was a \u201cgigantic organisation\u201d that \u201cmoves slowly\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to lay out in terms that I hope will get a lot of support that Ireland really wants to make our presidency of the union next year about the protection of the child online,\u201d he said of the planned discussions at the council meeting.<\/p>\n

He said, separate to EU discussions on the issue, there was \u201can impetus for us to do work at home\u201d. <\/p>\n

While the Australian government places the responsibility for verifying users\u2019 ages on platforms such as Meta and YouTube, Ireland is planning on creating an online wallet as a practical, technical solution to verify the age of social media users. <\/p>\n

Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n<\/a>, the media regulator, would be responsible for deciding when and how a social media platform should use age verification. <\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Donovan\u2019s Department has been working with the Department of Public Expenditure and the Department of Social Protection to introduce an online age verification tool which would be linked to the existing MyGovID, the online identity platform that is used to access social welfare payments. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Spending four-plus hours a day on social media affecting teens\u2019 mental health \u2013 studyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The office of the Government\u2019s Chief Information Officer, which is based in the Department of Public Expenditure, has been designing the digital wallet based on MyGovID which would be compatible with online age verification. <\/p>\n

Officials in the Department of Media and the Department of Public Expenditure recently met to discuss bringing forward the proposal. <\/p>\n

The Government has already been discussing the use of the new wallet with technology companies such as Google and Apple and it is expected the wallet will be tested under a pilot scheme. Data protection concerns and the views of children themselves will also be considered.<\/p>\n

Like all EU member states, Ireland is regulated by the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) which requires online platforms accessible to children to put in place \u201cappropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors\u201d on the platforms. <\/p>\n

The same regulation says that platforms will not be required \u201cto process additional personal data to assess whether the recipient of the service is a minor\u201d.<\/p>\n

Under the DSA, member states such as Ireland are required to help create consistent rules for online moderation and the digital market across Europe, meaning that one country should not have a different social media policy to the rest of the EU. <\/p>\n

There is still a debate within the EU about what the digital age of consent should be, and whether a social media age limit should be set by governments or by a child\u2019s parents. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plans to verify the ages of children who use social media as part of a wider move to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[986,3584,5148,96282,823,61,542,60,43,6232,58,4621],"class_list":["post-175897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-australia","tag-coimisiun-na-mean","tag-european-union","tag-european-council","tag-facebook","tag-ie","tag-instagram","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-patrick-o-donovan","tag-social-media","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}