Paul Hopkins: What are we doing to keep our kids safe online?

I had just turned 13 when my father stopped me in the hallway one day and pointed to the family cat. "See how Topsy has put on weight. That's because she is going to have kittens. It's the same with humans. Do you understand?" I nodded, his face flushed... and he moved on.

It turned out later that Topsy was a tom and was just becoming a fat cat. And I was left to my own devices to furtively learn about the birds and the bees. It was a different time, long before Gay Byrne and The Late Late Show, as that old stalwart of Fianna Fáil, Oliver J Flanagan said, "brought sex to Ireland".

With my own three children, things were a lot more enlightened, though the details of my explaining about the wonders of the 'facts of life' are somewhat fuzzy now. But, even if I had not been the enlightened dad, my three would have learnt about such by other means in a less censorious age, sex education at school notwithstanding.

But 30 odd years on, we're embedded in the world of www.com and a world where there is sexual imagery, implied or otherwise, everywhere you care to look. I mention all this because a new report says 55 children have been identified as victims of online sexual abuse, following a review of thousands of videos and images by specialist Garda units.

Gardaí say online threats targeting children are growing in "scale and sophistication", presenting unprecedented challenges for law enforcement. More than 30,000 videos and photographs defined as Child Sex Abuse Material were reviewed by the team and uploaded to Interpol's International Child Sexual Exploitation database – including almost 900 files which involve previously unknown victims.

Gardaí say offenders are leveraging AI tools to produce hyper-realistic deep-fake images and videos often used to "manipulate or blackmail" children.

Elsewhere last week, a survey of 700 primary school-aged children, conducted by online safety charity CyberSafeKids, reveals that four in five primary school children aged between eight and 12 are using their devices in their bedrooms.

Three in five of these primary school-aged children are allowed to have their devices overnight. The research reveals screen time dominates key parts of children's waking hours, with half of them going online straight after school, while 39 per cent use devices just before falling asleep, and one in 10 reach for them first thing in the morning.

The survey shows that boys are significantly more likely than girls to use devices in their bedrooms and are also more likely to keep their smartphone or iPad with them overnight.

This is alarming. Det. Supt Michael Mullen of the specialist Garda unit says parents need to be more aware of the dangers their children could be exposed to. "I think, significantly, parents need to realise that such behaviour is happening online at an alarming scale," he says. "And it's imperative that children and teenagers do not engage with strangers online, don't ever create or share intimate content."

He encourages any victims of abuse – including buying and body-shaming – not to give into cyber blackmail and to talk to a parent, friend or An Garda Síochána.

Childline reports that children as young as eight are exposed to becoming addicted to internet porn, giving them "unrealistic expectations" of sexual activity. And such sites are "encouraging young boys to grow up viewing girls as merely sex objects".

The disturbing reality is that online violent and degrading videos are just a few clicks away for many children. If parents and society need to be censorious then so be it – for the sake of our children. The freedom of the internet comes with a price. And that price for us adults and parents is responsibility and being consciously aware of what our children are engaged in or lured into behind their bedroom doors.

There’s a downside to this world of constant connectivity in which people are never offline and are increasingly addicted to their devices to the point of social isolation. And it is within that world of social isolation lies the opportunity for evil doings from those lurking in the shadows of the web.

Unless we act with guarded responsibility in what we allow our children access to, behind bedroom doors, they may well pay the price in adult life when they find themselves desensitised at the least and warped at the most to the wonderful joy of sexual intimacy.