Meeting of the Parliament 06 February 2018
I, too, thank Gillian Martin, not just for bringing this undoubtedly important debate to the chamber, but for reassuring me that I am not the only one who would like to construct a tall tower. The only point that I want to clarify is the age at which we can safely lock up our children. Is five too young? That would certainly be my instinct.
In reality, technology is part of the world in which our children grow up. It is not something different; it is not something other. It is part of their everyday existence; it is part of their futures, too. That point was underlined to me when I watched my eldest daughter when she was just two go up to our television screen and try to swipe it. That showed me how she perceived technology and what she understood she could expect from it. It was part of her experience—she saw a screen and she expected to be able to interact with it. It is from that perspective that we need to look at the issue.
In some ways, the debate is summed up by a combination of what Ruth Maguire and Gillian Martin said. Teenagers are still teenagers, and they will do the things that teenagers have always done. What they do online is an extension of the behaviours with which we are all familiar.
The other key point is that if we as adults come thundering in and say, “See this new internet thing—I want you to turn it off and not use it,” we are not getting it. We need to understand that, in treating the internet as something alien and different, we are perhaps perpetuating the problem. This debate is about extending freedom to our children, as opposed to protecting them, although we must seek to do that and to balance those two aspects. We must provide children and young people with the skills and the ambition to explore the world while trying to instil the habits and behaviours that will help them to act safely and keep them safe.
I recently took part in a debate hosted by the Edinburgh Mela that involved young people exploring those issues. I was struck by two things. First, how conversant they are with the broad range of internet-related issues, from cyberbullying to freedom of speech and copyright. The young people talked about those issues seamlessly, underlining not only how sophisticated their views can be, but how they do not see divisions between the things that they do.
The second issue that struck me was listening to an academic, who pointed out that a lot of issues that we deal with on the internet are not new. Issues related to the media and free speech have existed as long as the printing press has been around. The moral panics that we have had about the ability to freely distribute pamphlets are similar to those that we have with the internet. The difference is the scale, pervasiveness and pace of change of the technology and therefore of the trends and behaviour that we have been discussing this evening. We need to understand how we can contextualise the very real concerns that we have always had about how to handle teenagers and make our approach relevant to the internet age.
It is about ensuring that our teenagers have a space in which they can talk openly to adults and to one another about the issues that they face. We must provide teenagers and young people with the skills that they need if they are to navigate the world, while giving them the sense of freedom that they need if they are to engage with the world.
I was interested in the point that Barnardo’s made in its briefing. We must talk about not just the risks of the internet but other issues, such as inclusion. We must not assume that all young people are innately aware of the internet and are engaged in internet activity. Some young people are excluded from social media and the internet. We must consider all those things in the round.
I will stop there, because I see that I am 20 seconds over time—sorry, Presiding Officer.
18:21