Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Kei­th Scot­land, says he is pleased with the con­ver­sa­tions gen­er­at­ed out of his re­cent re­marks about laws bar­ring chil­dren be­low the age of 16 from ac­cess­ing so­cial me­dia, not­ing they were time­ly and nec­es­sary. 

How­ev­er, he em­pha­sised that there were no im­me­di­ate plans to leg­is­late for a ban.

“I was speak­ing to a group and brought to their at­ten­tion that this is what was hap­pen­ing in Aus­tralia and I just brought that to the fore­front. There were no hints of any Cab­i­net ap­proval. I just spoke about some­thing I read about and found it in­ter­est­ing.” 

At a sem­i­nar on cy­ber­crime on Wednes­day, Scot­land ref­er­enced de­vel­op­ments in Aus­tralia. 

“I was read­ing this week in Aus­tralia, there’s a move now to leg­is­late against chil­dren and teenagers be­ing on­line and hav­ing what you all have now, Tik­Tok, un­til you reach the age of 16. That is some­thing that we may have to look at in Trinidad and To­ba­go.” 

Re­cent­ly, the coun­try’s prime min­is­ter An­tho­ny Al­banese re­vealed a law was com­ing to in­sti­tute an age lim­it of 16 years for chil­dren to start us­ing so­cial me­dia and hold plat­forms re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing com­pli­ance. The leg­is­la­tion will be in­tro­duced in par­lia­ment dur­ing its fi­nal two weeks in ses­sion this year, which be­gin on No­vem­ber 18. The age lim­it would take ef­fect 12 months af­ter the law is passed, Al­banese told re­porters. 

Scot­land said there were no of­fi­cial plans by the Gov­ern­ment at this time for pol­i­cy to­wards ban­ning so­cial me­dia for chil­dren. 

“I am very hap­py that it has spawned a ma­ture con­ver­sa­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go and a con­ver­sa­tion be­cause the men­tal health of young peo­ple is very crit­i­cal and so­cial me­dia plays a very piv­otal role in their lives and this is some­thing we need to en­gage in very ma­ture and mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion about,” he added.

Mean­while, psy­chi­a­trist Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh said he was in sup­port of ef­forts to curb the neg­a­tive im­pacts of so­cial me­dia on chil­dren. He not­ed that while there is grow­ing ev­i­dence of on­line bul­ly­ing and ex­po­sure to in­ap­pro­pri­ate con­tent, a blan­ket ban may not ad­dress the root caus­es of so­cial me­dia’s harm­ful ef­fects. 

“To leg­is­late against it now is some­thing that might be dif­fi­cult to con­trol. It might al­so be a prob­lem where if you catch a child us­ing so­cial me­dia, what kind of pun­ish­ment are you go­ing to do? Would you be pun­ish­ing the par­ent who you may now say has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the chil­dren’s us­age? So its a dif­fi­cult and far-reach­ing sit­u­a­tion.”

Deyals­ingh said while there are con­cerns about the im­ple­men­ta­tion of leg­is­la­tion ban­ning chil­dren from so­cial me­dia, par­ents must play a greater role in mon­i­tor­ing the us­age of tech­nolo­gies.