Following the recent fine imposed by the [UK’s] Information Commissioner on TikTok of approximately £12m for the platform’s ‘misuse’ of children’s data, I finally felt compelled to write in in an attempt to gauge opinion from your readers as to how we, as an island, view our children’s usage of such sites and applications.

Aside from the fact that TikTok shouldn’t have been holding any children’s data to misuse, the fine follows hot on the heels of a report by Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, which said that (in the UK at least) legislation aimed at protecting children from online harms is so far behind what this readily available technology is delivering, it effectively has no teeth.

As a father of two girls of primary school age, I am on occasion shocked when discussing these platforms and technologies with other parents.

Anecdotally at least, there seems to be a general naivety towards how these platforms operate or how easy it is for inappropriate content to be found; more concerningly, the overriding attitude appears to be that ‘this stuff is out there, the kids want to use it, what can you do?’

Having honestly talked to scores of people on the topic over a number of years, both prior to and since becoming a parent, I can say that I have yet to find a single adult (parent or otherwise) who has said: ‘I wish this technology and these platforms were around when I was a child.’

Every single person I have spoken with has said how difficult it must be to be a child growing up with this in today’s world.

Surely, children are only growing up with this if we hand them the ‘tools’.

I am alarmed at how many children of primary school age have internet connecting devices in their pockets, and alarmed further still at the number of them who have their own accounts on social media platforms.

When I was 12 or 13, of course I would, for example, want to watch films that were rated 15 or 18, the desire by children to access materials which may not be age-appropriate is not new, far from it.

However, we are no longer dealing with Freddie Kruger or top-shelf magazines, and, as the Commissioner’s report stated, such material could almost be considered quaint by today’s standards.

Some of the first-hand accounts she had been given by children as young as 12 about their first kiss etc were truly shocking. This is happening on our watch.

I am not a prude.

I am still a young person and look for the positives wherever I can and indeed will acknowledge that technology is a tool which can be used for both positive and negative means, so throwing the baby out with the bath water is not a solution.

However, having had many conversations regarding this topic with many different people, it really does seem that we need to open our eyes collectively to what this technology is doing, and in particular how these platforms operate.

They do not have our children’s best interests at heart.

They have profits and shareholder satisfaction levels as a driver for what they do and your child becoming in some way damaged as a consequence is purely collateral.

This stance became clear in the evidence given by representatives of certain platforms in the inquest into Molly Russell’s death.

We are and hopefully always will be the biggest single influence into our children’s lives, but we face a really tough challenge to that at the minute.

We are not up against fashions or music which seemed strange to our parents.

We have a multi-billion dollar industry pro-actively courting our children’s attention, be it positively or negatively.

So I would ask this: if you are one of those people who say that you are glad that this stuff wasn’t around when you were young and that kids should be left to be kids, why would you not want that for your own children?

Ultimately the power is still with us despite it being easy to think otherwise.

Do our under 12s really need an internet connected device?

Even were it available, I’m sure I wouldn’t have needed one when I was that age.

Governments worldwide have had long enough now to crack down on the platforms and to TikTok, the £12m fine will likely be seen as a cost of doing business.

After all, that data has already been ‘misused’ and they will have an idea of what future profits it will drive.

That £12m will be chump change.

With seemingly no appetite, or no idea from governments as to what to do about this, perhaps we should take things into our own hands, and out of our children’s?

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This letter was first published in the Isle of Man Examiner of April 18.