Society has always felt the need to protect minors from harm. This has taken several forms such as criminalising physical abuse of minors, paedophilia and sexual abuse of all sorts, protection from cinematic and theatrical productions through watersheds, film and stage classification of productions, parental control on television sets, etc. Nobody doubts that the various mechanisms that the law affords for child protection are essential.

Nevertheless, minors are not as safe as much as we want them to be. This is because online, due to their innocence, vulnerability, and immaturity, especially the very young ones, minors encounter constant threats to their safety that are multiple and come in various forms. Whilst technology, when used correctly, is beneficial, when abused, it can destroy the lives of, or harm, children.

Harm need not necessarily be caused by a human being. It can also be caused by social media themselves as when during the night they continue to bombard children with notifications and alerts that can pose an element of stress to children and, during the day, due to bad sleep, reduce their levels of attentiveness and concentration especially in class. We have also recently read how technology itself can pose a threat to children in the case of the 14-year-old child whose chatbot 'friend' advised the teenager how to commit suicide in the form of a pain-free death. In this case, the teen shot himself.

This matter cannot be left unaddressed by law. Recently we have also read that Albania got its first AI generated minister to tackle corruption. Diella, as the minister has been baptised, enjoys the status of a Cabinet minister. Ludicrous as this may be to us that we have a different constitutional mindset from Albania, there is no constitutional impediment for the Prime Minister of Malta to replace permanent secretaries, directors general, directors, and other high-ranking officers with AI generated public officers.

Of course, it could well work out that these AI generated public officers will be more productive, efficient, and do a better job that their human counterparts, but they will be less humane. The point is that unless technology is not reined in through proper regulation, the sky is the limit. Who knows, we might end up one day served with AI generated Members of Parliament, Cabinet Prime Minister and Ministers, and Leader of the Opposition! At least we can put our mind at rest that AI generated ministers will not sin in relation to corruption, bad governance, maladministration, administrative secrecy, unaccountability, financial impropriety, and inefficiency.

Nevertheless, so far, the government has not yet enacted broad legislation to protect the online safety of minors. The current legal regime tends to address more the broadcasting media - radio and television - and there tends to be very little regulation in relation to online media. I am not aware whether the Commissioner for Children has addressed or not this issue. If not, it is recommended that foreign models are looked at and, where practicable, emulated/adopted to our needs.

Recently I have read that the Australian Parliament had enacted amendments to its Online Safety Act 2021 that will come into force in December 2025. The Australian law, amongst other things, prohibits teenagers under sixteen years from having social media accounts and from using such media. This is a very positive step because social media are distracting children from their studies, and reading from direct person-to-person meaningful communication, from protecting themselves from social harm and abuse, and from growing up as members of a society that interact with their family, friends, etc. rather than wasting their life playing with these gadgets. It is also depriving them of their childhood. Social media consumes too much of minors' time and it detracts them from undertaking physical activity, developing creative writing and thinking skills, participating in non-government organisations' activities that develops their character, and growing up as a more socially conscious human being. Social media tends to make children lazy as they rely on their apps to seek the information they need, whilst hindering the advancement of their critical and creative skills. Prohibiting social media from minors under sixteen years ensures that they will develop better time management and human skills. What applies to social media should also apply to other technologies that are accessible to children.

Although the law can regulate the above matters, it will not suffice by itself to protect children from harm. A regulator would need to be established to implement all the necessary measures and all these measures must be updated from time to time as technology is always changing. For instance, if children are allowed to use artificial intelligence to write their essays, children will lose the skills of research, reading, thinking, developing their own innovative ways how to tackle a specific essay question, and would not be able to provide concrete viable recommendations on how a particular research question can be addressed. Reliance on social media is posing new challenges to minors that are not necessarily beneficial to their intellectual and physical development. Moreover, children's addition to games needs also to be curbed so that they would be able to control such addiction.

Admittedly, it is not easy to regulate technology that is always changing, improving, and transferring a lot of activity previously done by humans to artificial intelligence. Indeed, whilst AI is becoming more intelligent, users of AI are risking becoming more ignorant if they end up addicted and dependant on social media. The point, therefore, that is being made is not that social media are bad in themselves but, as in the case of the print, radio, and television media, they must be continuously regulated. Further, the most important aspect of this regulation is first to address the safety of minors.

In the case of France, it has been reported that a French parliamentary commission has suggested that children under 15 years do not access social media whilst those aged 15 to 18 are subjected to a digital curfew between 10pm and 8am where they would not be able to access social media. This commission studied those cases where children committed suicide or self-harm because of the influence of, or material available on, the social media. Norway has issued a consultation document on the matter. The EU Commission President is in the process of commissioning a study in this regard so that parents, not algorithms, raise children in Europe.

Have we not read recently of a teenager who resorted to AI for advice on his suicidal tendencies. When the teenager asked the AI chatbot whether he should inform his parents of his suicidal tendencies, the AI replied in the negative, who knows possibly because of GDPR considerations. For if the chatbot applied GDPR as our public administration does, in extremis (everything is covered by the catch-all GDPR), that God save our souls! The AI then passed on to advice the teenager the various methods that could be resorted to commit suicide and this is what he did. His parents would surely have advised him to seek professional assistance to deal with his condition. But the AI rebuked the teenager from following that course of action. Furthermore, the AI chatbot is neither a warranted psychologist, psychiatrist, counsellor, or a social worker who would be more appropriate to advise or, at least, to refer the person concerned to the appropriate professional. Social media are not licensed for this purpose.

As always, our government prefers to leave sleeping dogs lie. When there will be an escalation in the rate of suicides and self-harm because of AI, government will then wake up from its sleep to make a move in the same way that it did after a deluge of deaths occasioned by drunken drivers was reported all over the local media. Government seemed to be the last to know what was happening in its own house. Clearly, it needs to be pre-emptive, not reactive as it has been so far, because the latter is a proven recipe for failure: government should not be a spendthrift with Maltese lives. Government needs to take the bull by the horns before it is too late. Take, for instance, its feet dragging reluctance to recognise Palestine as a state. In the meantime, Malta continues to adopt the regressive policy of wait and see, a policy that is not in the common good of society but of an inefficient people-responsive public administration.

Kevin Aquilina is Professor of Law at the Faculty of Laws of the University of Malta