Joint Committee on Children & Youth Affairs, 07.02.2018

Presentation to the Joint Committee on Children & Youth Affairs,
Leinster House, 07.02.2018

Members of Wicklow Comhairle na nÓg and from Clare Comhairle na nÓg  were invited to present at the Joint Committee on Children & Youth Affairs on 7th Feb. They discussed their projects on Cyber Security & Safety for children & young people. Wicklow spoke about their cyber-bullying charter which was launched the day before on Safer Internet Day 6th Feb. Clare Comhairle spoke about their cyber safety programme, run in partnership with McAfee, and their sexting workshop, co-run with Samfés, the Icelandic equivalent of Comhairle, through an Erasmus+ exchange with Iceland.

Clare Comhairle last year hosted a “Sexting Peer Education Workshop”, based on an initiative by Samfés. Their presentation follows new research showing that almost half of Irish teenagers in their final year at school say they have participated in sexting, which is defined as the sharing of sexual text, video, and photographic content using phone, social networks, apps and other technologies. The study shows that sexting activity increased progressively through each year of second-level education.

The presenters also talked about the outcome of a Cyber Safety Workshop for students which was designed by McAfee, facilitated by Clare Youth Service and funded by Clare Local Development Company in 2016 and 2017. 752 young people, mainly first year students, took part in the programme in schools across Clare.