Richard O'Donoghue: Phones Listening, AI Risks and Parental Duty
Richard O'Donoghue warned that phones are "listening" and that social media and AI-generated content are blurring reality for adults and children, calling for regulation and parental accountability. He rejected a simple ban at 16 and said responsibility must be shared between parents, children, governance and legislation.
Phones and AI-generated content
He said phones appear to tailor content to recent conversations, claiming "in the next five minutes whatever we're talking about will pop up on our phones." He warned algorithms can push follow-up items, show images of self-harm and present AI-generated material that misrepresents people.
Students' experience of online reality
He described asking TY students from St Mary's in Charleston, including children from Cork, Limerick, Spain and Ukraine, how they judge what is real online. He said the students told him they sometimes cannot tell if things are real or not.
Opposition to simple age bans and parental role
He stated that banning services at 16 is not the solution and emphasised parental accountability, noting parents increasingly hand phones to children as young as eight to keep them quiet. He argued responsibility should not fall solely to governance and said some sites should not be accessible to children who can bypass restrictions by giving false information.
Call for a shared toolkit of measures
He called for a combined approach of parents, children, governance and legislation as the practical tools needed to protect young people. He urged collective action by parents and authorities to ensure children and parents are protected in the future.
We publish thousands of recordings to make Irish politics transparent and resistant to manipulation. Spotted an error? Report it — together we are building a reliable archive of Irish politics.
We can see while we're talking here now our phones are listening and when you go look at your own phone, in the next five minutes whatever we're talking about will pop up on our phones. So it's not only for the children we have to look at, it's the adults as well. So the online thing is getting into all of our thoughts and whatever we look up, if you look up anything, it will then send you four or five things based on that. Now if it's doing that to adults, what's it doing to children? We can see different social media outlooks and if somebody signs up and goes on whatever outlet, it sends them images of people that are self harming or different things. But it's also sending images to people that are not actually true at all. It's showing people that they're actually doing things that they're not doing. So it's AI generated. So now you don't even know if you're actually looking at something that's real or not. I had TY students up here today from St Mary's in Charleston. And there was children there from Cork, Limerick, Spain, Ukraine. And I just asked them the question, I said, what is it with the social media? How do you look true to yourselves? And they said to me themselves, sometimes they can't tell if things are real or not. So to me banning something at 16 I don't think is the answer. I think the regulation also you need to have accountability from the parents. How many parents are handing their child phones at eight years of age now themselves? The responsibility should not come back down to governance. It's part of it. But the responsibility comes back to parents. Giving them to keep them quiet rather than doing things that are normal. They think let them look online, let them look whatever they like to do. Responsibility needs to come to parents as well. And in cases where certain sites they shouldn't be allowed for. Because if you look at it at whatever age you are, you can get online by giving false this and false that. It can be AI generated to say that you're something different and then you get online. So we need to look at the tools that we can work with. And the tools we can work with is the parents, plus the children, plus the governance, plus legislation. That's what we need to do. It's all parents together needs to work together. And that's what we need to do to make sure that our children and the parents are protected in the future. Thank you. Thank you Colin.
Thank you for downloading 🙏
If you publish this material on social media, we would be very grateful if you tagged VideoParliament. It helps us reach more people and keep building a transparent archive of Irish politics.
