6 LUCAN Gazette 14 November 2013
opinion ‘Connectivity comes with a price’ – Fitzgerald
Helping to keep our kids safe on the Net Parents and teachers need to educate themselves and their children to make the right choices online and an increasing range of tools is becoming available to help them, writes the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald. A recent study esti-
mates that a fifth of Irish teenagers have accessed inappropriate content online that disturbed them. Even more alarmingly, the same study indicates that up to 10% of teenagers may have met up with someone they met online. These worrying trends– along with the well-documented increase in cyberbullying
in Ireland – place new and ever greater pressures on parents and educators. Today’s teenagers have grown up in a world of unprecedented technological advancement and connectivity. Indeed, they have been online almost from the age they could walk. In many cases, their
technological know-how matches or outstrips that of their parents, meaning mothers and fathers may be ill-equipped to provide guidance and boundaries for online behaviour. Connectivity comes with a price. Besides the more sinister dangers of cyberbullying and online predators, there are other less obvious dangers. A teenager may not be aware of their huge online footprint until the day they discover they have a huge online footprint. Each time your child posts a picture on Facebook or details their activities on social media, it might have negative consequences for future school, work or other life options. However, it is vital for parents and educators to realise that a growing number of options are available to them to tackle these very serious risks. There needs to be a change in attitude, whereby parents don’t only ask their children “how did you get on in school today”, but discuss with them “how did you
Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Frances Fitzgerald
get on online today”. We need to teach our kids about what it means to be responsible online. This Government has committed to giving Ireland’s children the best possible opportunities from the earliest possible age, and that includes from an online point of view. This week, along with Taoiseach Enda Kenny, I attended the launch of online security company McAfee’s Online Safety for Kids programme in Ireland. In response to the findings from its Irish Digital Divide Study – which highlights how teens increasingly keep their parents in the dark about their activities online – McAfee is rolling out a number of pilot programmes, which An Taoiseach and I are
enthusiastically supporting. To date, 80 McAfee volunteers in Cork have taught at more than 30 schools and community centres, reaching more than 3,000 young people, parents and teachers. To take the programme to a national level, McAfee will leverage the power of Intel, Ireland’s largest employer, to join forces on volunteer efforts. In 2014, it is hoped that more than 10,000 kids in Ireland will come into contact with the McAfee Online Safety for Kids programme. McAfee is also creating a youth ambassador programme that will leverage youth in their transition years to teach online safety for kids in local primary and secondary schools.
McAfee aims to leverage the youth in the nonformal education sector via its partnership with Foroige. Sean Campbell, chief executive, Foroige, says: “As an organisation that works with close to 60,000 young people across the country, we know how fundamentally important this initiative is. Foroige is committed to empowering young people to use technology to make the world a better place, but this can only happen if we fortify our young people with the knowledge and skills to navigate the online world safely.” There are a number of other simple steps parents can take to engage with their children about their online activity. First, oneto-one communication is vital – take time to understand how your children use the internet, and only then assess whether further intervention may be necessary. As parents, we must challenge ourselves to keep up to speed with technological changes, so that we can do the best for our children both on- and offline.
Frances Fitzgerald Minister for Children and Youth Affairs