You already have a picture of online rights young people hold: information, free expression, protection of minors, data protection. Today the question flips. Rights only matter if someone can act on them. Who can actually enforce your rights online, what can each person or body do, and where does responsibility sit when something goes wrong?

When something goes wrong online, people often say “someone should do something”. The hard part is working out who can do what. Five kinds of actor matter in Ireland.

Work in five groups. Each group takes one actor and becomes the class expert on what that actor can and cannot actually do.

Your mission

1. Your actor is the one your group is assigned below.
2. Your complaints are the three letters listed for your group.
3. For each assigned complaint mark Act, Support only, or Not our job, plus one short reason.

Your actor (one per group)

1. The young person
2. A parent or guardian
3. The digital technology company (the platform or app)
4. Government: two related jobs, not one: online-safety and media rules for platforms, and personal-data rights. Say which job you mean for each complaint.
   Cheat line: Data problems (account / data / location) → the data-protection job. Content and platform safety rules after you have already reported → the online-safety job. Neither is same-day delete.
5. Civil society supports (helpful organisations outside school, home, companies and government)

Routing labels (use these only)

• Act: your actor can take a direct step
• Support only: your actor can help, advise or escalate, but someone else must do the main fix
• Not our job: this sits outside your actor's real powers

Complaint assignments

• Group 1 (young person): A, C, E
• Group 2 (parent or guardian): B, D, F
• Group 3 (company): A, D, F
• Group 4 (government): B, C, E
  Starter steer (not answers): B and E often point at the data-protection job (account/data); C often points at the platform first, then the online-safety job if the platform route fails. Always say which job you mean.
• Group 5 (civil society): A, B, F

The six invented complaints

• A. Private photos from a group chat were screenshotted and posted publicly without everyone's consent.
• B. A young person asked a platform to delete their account and personal data. Weeks later, nothing has changed.
• C. A stranger keeps sending abusive direct messages after being blocked once.
• D. A video of a fight outside a school is spreading on a short-video app and several students want it taken down.
• E. A free game app is collecting precise location data that the user never knowingly agreed to share.
• F. A young person keeps seeing harmful content in their recommended feed that they have already tried to stop seeing, and wants stronger action than "not interested".

What your group prepares (about 9 minutes)

1. List two things your actor can realistically do when online rights are at stake.
2. List one thing your actor cannot do (a power people often assume they have, but they do not).
3. Route only the three complaints assigned to your group. For each one, mark Act, Support only, or Not our job, with one short reason. (Government group: name which body you mean.)

Teach the class (about 6 minutes)

Each group has roughly 60 seconds. Do not read your full list. Instead:

1. State your actor in one sentence.
2. Name one power and one clear limit.
3. Pick one of your assigned complaints and say how you would route it: Act, Support only, or Not our job, with one reason.

Now that you have heard what each actor can and cannot do, take a position on a harder question. There is no single correct answer the lesson is steering you toward.

The question

Four views to weigh (all argued at full strength)

• View 1: The platforms first. Companies design the feeds, the report buttons and the rules. They profit from attention, so they should carry the heaviest duty to prevent and fix harm at scale.
• View 2: Parents and guardians first. Under-18s are still learning judgement. Adults who care for them should set boundaries, notice distress early and escalate when needed.
• View 3: Young people themselves. Rights come with agency. Knowing how to block, report, keep evidence and choose what to share is the skill that works fastest in the moment.
• View 4: Shared and layered. No single actor can cover every case. Government sets the floor, companies build safe systems, families support, civil society advises, and the young person still has decisions only they can make.

What to do

1. On your own, pick the view closest to yours, or blend two if you need to. Be ready to name one strength of your view and one weakness an honest critic would raise.
2. In pairs, swap views. Your job is not to "win". Say your partner's view back in one fair sentence, at its strongest, until they agree you got it.
3. As a class, hear two contrasting voices only. Notice where people agree on facts (what each actor can do) and where they disagree on values (who should carry the weight).

Pull the threads together. Online rights are real, but enforcement is shared and uneven. You can act quickly on some problems; a parent or guardian can escalate others; a company controls tools and content rules; government enforces rules for platforms and for personal data. It is not a same-day helpdesk, and you usually contact the company first, but both can take certain complaints further when a platform does not fix the problem. Civil society helps you find the path. Gaps appear when people expect one actor to do another actor's job. Knowing the map is what turns "someone should do something" into a concrete next step.