Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:35 pm on 14 December 2021.
I respectfully disagree with Darren Millar. I think it's really, really terrible for children's rights if they don't know what's happening to them when they're going through puberty. Why is it that so many girls have no idea what is going to happen to them when they start their period? And that is just shocking, and very frightening and unnecessarily slow. And we really do live in the worst of all worlds, where sex is used to sell everything, whether it's harmful pornography or it's to sell the latest shoes, or the football, or a car. So, we absolutely have to get to grips with this, as we saw in Meilyr Rowlands's devastating report on what we already knew was happening—the peer-on-peer sexual harassment that goes on through people's smartphones and other online platforms. It's really, really uncomfortable, and most of this bullying and sexual harassment doesn't go on in schools, it's going on outside school, although it may well be going on in school too. But it really, really underlines the importance of the collaborative partnership with families, as well as the right of the young person to get some sense into different relationships that both children and adults have. This is the reality of their lives, and if we're not explaining to them how they may wish to explore their personality and their sexuality, without giving them any context for all the other horrible things that sex is used for, to corrupt people's heads as well as their lives—. We really have to take this matter really, really seriously. And I have confidence in the ability of teachers to address this matter in an age-appropriate way that gives people comfort that there's nothing unusual about their particular family situation, because it comes in all shapes and sizes, whilst we are having commercial interests who are targeting children and young people and getting them to think about things in a way that is totally artificial and harmful.
So, we really do have to address this, because otherwise we are going to have people growing up thinking that sex is all about being brutal and violent, and absolutely it is not. It's all about being loving, and firm friendships and respect for each other. So, we really do have a big problem here, and I suppose my question today to the Minister is whether or not he thinks that we should be banning smartphones in schools and really advising parents it is not a great idea to be giving smartphones to young people where they can access all the harmful stuff that goes on on the internet that's, at the moment, sadly, completely uncontrolled.