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Increasing majority of children aged 8-12 use social media, according to new survey

Charity CyberSafeKids found that 92% of children in this age group own their own smart device.

A CHILDREN’S ONLINE safety charity has found that over one-quarter of kids aged 8-12 are able to go online “whenever they want” and that the vast majority have social media profiles.

CyberSafeKids, formerly known as CyberSafeIreland, surveyed more than 2,000 children aged eight to 12 and found that levels of social media use among this age group have risen by 17% since last year.

Video app TikTok is the most commonly used among this age cohort, with 46% of children saying they use the app. 

The CEO of CyberSafeKids, Alex Cooney, said that Covid-19 restrictions have resulted in “more children than ever” using social media despite being younger than the minimum age required. Many apps require users to be at least 13 to sign up. 

“The age group we surveyed is still a very young audience and generally would be in the earlier stages of their online journey, and the message we want to get across is that they need parental guidance,” Cooney told TheJournal.ie. 

She said children in this age cohort should not be having “entirely independent experiences” online. 

“It’s important to have those conversations and put in rules like, for example, we can play on devices in the living room but can’t do it a bedroom with the door shut.” 

28% of children surveyed said they can go online “whenever they want” and 15% said there have “no rules” around internet use. 

The survey also showed that 28% of children have friends or followers who are strangers. 

35% of children said they used WhatsApp, and one-third use Snapchat. 

The survey of 2,089 children aged between eight and 12 was carried out between September last year and January 2021. A total of 92% of these children say they own their own smart device. 

Cooney emphasised the benefits of the internet for educational and social reasons, but said that “especially when kids are young” it’s important to talk about limits and rules for social media usage. 

“We have probably relied more on technology in the last 12 months than we ever have – and that goes for kids too,” she said. 

“We all kind of know what we should be doing with things like healthy eating and road safety, for example, but we really need to fast-track putting in these social norms for digital wellbeing as well.” 

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    Mute AnthonyK
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    Oct 1st 2024, 1:52 PM

    A precedence has been set with this. Well meaning as it is. Will not other survivors of state ineffectiveness want something similar.

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    Mute ben wu
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:02 PM

    @AnthonyK: At a risk of sounding controversial, I think this should have been dealt with under some form of compensation or redress rather than some blanket thing.
    That it doesn’t preclude future settlements is an odd thing.
    However, I’m more onboard with the Gov actually doing something rather than nothing for those people it’s completely failed.

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    Mute Niall English
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:00 PM

    maybe hold tony hoolahan to account? no, no, that would be too much to expect of this snide government.

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:03 PM

    @Niall English: What specifically should he be held to account for?

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    Mute ....
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:07 PM

    Are they going to do this for all individuals who have been failed by the state (and how is that defined)? There’s plenty of people who have suffered, including Stardust victims, people who can’t get or afford homes.

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 1st 2024, 2:06 PM

    The amount of misinformation out there around what happened with cervical check is mind-blowing. The way some people talk you’d swear that the testing service actually gave people cancer.

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    Mute Brian D'Arcy
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    Oct 1st 2024, 4:58 PM

    @Jason Memail: Quite the opposite, it didn’t tell them that they had cancer so they didn’t receive the treatment they needed, in a nutshell

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 2nd 2024, 12:37 AM

    @Brian D’Arcy: That’s absolutely false, and part of the misinformation that’s common on this subject. 1) These women received tests from cervical check which told them that cancer cells were not present. 2) These women subsequently developed cancer, and a review of their original tests was carried out. 3) The reviews showed that the earlier tests missed what may have been cancerous cells, with these reviews aided by the fact that the reviewers knew what they were looking for, since the patients had developed cancer.

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 2nd 2024, 12:37 AM

    @Jason Memail: 4) The decision was made, and this is the real crux of the issue, not to go back and tell those women that the earlier tests missed the potentially cancerous cells, mainly because what good would it do? They now had cancer and knowing an earlier test missed it wouldn’t change that. 5) Overall, the suggestion that cervical check didn’t tell these people they had cancer is demonstrably false, because the only reason the reviews were carried out on the initial tests is because they had cancer, which they knew about. 6) Going back and checking original tests when something like this happens is standard practice, and the right thing to do in order to improve future testing, but

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    Mute Jason Memail
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    Oct 2nd 2024, 12:37 AM

    @Jason Memail: 7) you can argue whether or not it was the right decision not to inform people about what the earlier tests missed, but it would not and could not have changed the fact that they now, sadly, had cancer, and 8) Knowing that an earlier test missed something could not have allowed them to start treatment earlier, because it’s in the oast. 9) If you want to know the specifics of it, I’d suggest checking out care2much on Twitter, who has written some incredibly detailed threads on the subject.

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    Mute silvery moon
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    Oct 1st 2024, 4:59 PM

    While this is welcome and like one commentor said that it should have been done with compensation.
    As a survivor of the industrial state/religious run institutions we never got compensation we were give an “Award” as if we won something, we cannot get enhanced medical cards that the survivors from the mother and baby home were afforded, we cannot get a contributary pension even though we had to work in these institutions, we now get another slap in the face by being excluded from theses tax benefits. I live in a council house and am grateful for that, I live with my ill husband and disabled totally dependant 23 year old son was told that I can purchase the house for a minimum of between 60 and 80 thousand euro, cannot get a mortgage as my husband is 70 as the cut off is 69 and we’ve have no where to go to help buy the house so our disabled son would have a roof over his head if anything happened to us.

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