Mitsotakis: We will look at the prohibition on the use of social media by minors under 16

The prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis He participated in an event organized by Australia on “Protecting Children in the Digital Age” as part of the high level of the 80th UN General Assembly in New York. The prime minister was accompanied by his wife, Mareva Grabowski-Mitsotaki.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis noted during his speech referred to the measures taken by the Greek government such as the ban on mobile phones in schools and added that “in Greece we are thinking of banning the use of social media from the age of 16 and down, as it is.”

Here is the prime minister’s speech:

Emma, thank you very much for sharing your story with us. It should be needed a lot of courage to turn your personal pain into this very powerful call for action. Mr Prime Minister, thank you for your leading role on this issue. I believe that we will all closely watch the way you will apply this important decision, which will have a global impact.

Last summer, my wife asked me to read a book by Jonathan Haidt, who is with us today. I’m sure you know it, his title is “The Anxious Generation”. It was an experience that opened my eyes to me, because as I read about the impact that social media has on our children and adolescents, I felt like they were telling me the stories that our parents themselves tell us at every opportunity. We carry out the greatest uncontrolled experiment ever done with the minds of our children. We do not know what the consequences will be, but we are almost certain that they will not be positive.

Mitsotakis: We will look at the prohibition on the use of social media by minors under 16

If we know that the elements are incomprehensible, then as leaders we must clearly do something about it. First of all, we need to help parents, because this should not only be the responsibility of parents, as I know how difficult it can be for a single parent to ask their child to disconnect from social media when everyone else does the same.

In Greece, we were very seriously facing this initiative. First of all, we banned mobile phones in all our schools, and this had a transformative impact on educational experience. But we went a step further in trying to solve the main problem, or rather the main excuse that technology companies always use when talking about age limits on social media, that is, age verification. We are told, “How can we know the real age of users?”

First of all, they know very well the age of users because they can see through the content. They know so much about us. In fact, they have a very good picture of our age. But what we did is that we created a website on gov.gr, a digital space called “parco.gov.gr”, which is essentially doing two things. First of all, it is associated with our digital register. We now have a digital age verification tool for parents so they can connect when buying the first phone for their child. They also have access to a easy -to -use parental control application in terms of the use of social media.

We think this is just the first step, because it is up to parents to open such accounts. I realize that it is not easy for a single to make such decisions. We in Greece are ready to go a step further and seriously consider the prohibition of the use of social media through the setting of digital adulthood limit like the one you have applied. I have asked my team to work closely with your team to see how we can implement it.

As you pointed out, Mr Prime Minister, it will not be perfect, but we cannot invoke the difficulties in implementing these policies as an excuse not to do anything about the problem. I am very happy that the chairman of the committee made a special reference to her speech on the state of the Union, raising awareness of this.

From my experience in Greece, I can tell you that when we started talking publicly about this problem, there were too many parents who contacted us and asked us, they begged us to do something about this problem. As responsible leaders, we have the obligation, not just responsibility, to face this challenge, and we intend to do.

Of course, here we are only talking about social media, but we have not yet examined the question of how our children interact with artificial intelligence chatbots. This is going to be another topic for discussion, which will be of concern to us immediately. Do we really want our children to have digital friends who can lead them to behaviors that are not only unacceptable but can be devastating? We have the responsibility not only to work with technology companies, but also to make them clear who sets the rules. Technology companies make a lot of money, they do not need to make money from the vulnerability of our children. Thank you very much.