Alex Cooney, chief executive of Irish charity CyberSafeKids, has called for social media executives to face criminal liability rather than fines for the harm their platforms cause children, arguing that current regulation is too slow and ineffective to protect a generation of children from serious online harm. Her warning follows the charity's annual report, which found little improvement in child online safety despite Ireland's Online Safety Code, and singled out gaming platform Roblox as a major and growing source of risk that many parents fail to recognise or understand.

The report, based on a survey of 6,000 primary school children, found that 70% of eight to 12-year-olds still hold accounts on apps meant for over-13s, 14 months after the safety code's introduction, and that 58% of children reporting negative online experiences said these occurred on Roblox. Children as young as five described being chased, stalked, threatened and pressured to strip during role-play games on the platform. Roblox said it had introduced age-checks for chat access since January and a real-time moderation system in March, but the report highlighted a regulatory gap, as gaming platforms have so far avoided the stricter EU oversight applied to large social media firms.