Jess Kelly

The same way we have in day to day physical life.

Yeah, no, 100%.

And my final question is, again, I referenced earlier Minister O'Donovan was on with Anton and Anton made the point that, you know, if you go forward and cause this level of disruption by changing how social media works for under 16s, you might tick off some of the big tech companies on which we are very reliant from an economic point of view.

Yeah.

Is that something that we should be worried about?

Like, do you anticipate the big tech companies getting the hump and going off?

Because from what I can see, they'd struggle to find a welcoming neighbor who would allow the status quo to continue, certainly within Europe.

Alex Cooney of Cyber Safe Kids, as always, thank you so much for joining me here on Newstalk.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'd love to know your thoughts on this one.

Because again, I feel like people are obsessed with the notion of a ban.

But in my opinion, as I've said many times, a ban isn't the answer.

Ireland's solution seems to be a mature approach, but it does require more effort on the part of the social media and tech companies, bearing in mind that they are all...

filthy rich.

The cost of doing this would be negligible to keep our young people safe online.

So I do think we need to keep the pressure up.

I also do feel obliged, as I always do when we have these conversations, to say that the reason I'm not in favour of a ban is because there are so many brilliant things that young people can do online.

There is no denying that some of the educational content on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube Shorts, on YouTube as a whole,

is phenomenal.

I, as a fully grown adult, go to YouTube to learn things and I find it incredibly beneficial.