The protection of children from mobile phones and social media is a theme that regularly appears in the media. It is frequently overshadowed by the radical debates about immigration but in practice, I feel the men in Silicon Valley are a far greater threat to Irish childhood than a few men sleeping in tents along the Grand Canal in Dublin.
The story about a school in Greystones deciding to limit mobile phone access for young children was reported worldwide.
Some of my recent interventions on the topic predate the action at Greystones:
In 2018, I spoke about Facebook and Twitter while attending the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. Here is the video.
Ever since then, Facebook and Twitter are censoring links to my blog. If you want to share a link to my blog then please email it or print it.
In 2021, I published the blog post Google, FSFE and Child Labor. Shortly after the publication, IBM Red Hat began a law suit to censor one of my web sites. They submitted a copy of the blog Google, FSFE and Child Labor as part of their claim. The legal panel ruled in my favor, declaring that IBM Red Hat had harassed me for my critical commentary about children in the open source software supply chain.
Few people have more expertise on this topic: I had completed my amateur radio exam when I was 14 years old. In other words, being the youngest person in my village to pass the exam and gain access to my own communications hardware, including traditional radios and digital modems, I was online before mobile phones or social media existed in the form that children use them today.