Information regarding the application of Kids Wallet, the “cutter” for the uncontrolled access of minors to social media, was presented by the Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, on the morning show of ERT1, almost two weeks before the presentation by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, of the national plan for minors’ addiction to social media.

According to what was stated by Mr. Papastergiou, Kids Wallet will be a “tool in the hands of parents” to control the overexposure of minors on social media, with parents however remaining “a safety net for our children, since no ban will work if we don’t talk together their”.

“There is a diagnosed problem. Many times we parents pretend it doesn’t exist because we are comfortable with leaving our children with a cell phone somewhere, without having any particular awareness of what they are seeing. If we have diagnosed this, we should take action. It is very easy to say that we are taking action. Say I forbid it. But we will have to see how these measures can be implemented. It is an empty letter to say that I forbid something when the next day you cannot implement it”, emphasized Mr. Papastergiou, before referring to the operation of the digital wallet, which is called upon to act as a deterrent regarding the uncontrolled exposure of minors on social media.

“The big issue is how do you check the age of these kids. Through the digital wallet, we can derive the age from the civil registry. There is a digital way to see the age of a phone owner. And the point for us is to force the platforms to look for an age certificate. We are looking for a common European tool for age control.”

According to Mr. Papastergiou, the specific application should find allies of the children’s parents in order to be effective, since they are the ones who have to make the “declaration-matching”.

“We give parents the tools, but they should also help in this direction. With Kids Wallet, they will be able to confirm their children’s age digitally. By declaring their child’s mobile number, we will know the owner’s age. If a declaration-matching is not made by the parents, and if the Wallet is not activated on the child’s mobile phone, no control mechanism can help to limit the phenomenon. Through the application, you will be able to define the content, but also the exposure time of a child on social media. However, no ban will work if we don’t talk to our children.”

Referring to “Daedalos”, the artificial intelligence “factory” that will be set up in Lavrio, he said that it will provide solutions to everyday problems, while stressing the importance of Greece entering the map of such a great challenge, given that it is included “among the seven countries selected by the EU to be funded, in order to proceed with the creation of an AI Factory”.

“The data governance bill is coming to the cabinet from January in Parliament. How data, anonymous and secured, will be able to produce political applications and solutions. Presumably these new businesses, like the Government probably, want computing power. Artificial intelligence is voracious. He wants big computers. That is why our supercomputer, the Greek supercomputer, Daedalos, is being created with money from the Development Fund, so that all these solutions do not run on computers abroad, but from Greece and specifically from Lavrio”, concluded Mr. Papastergiou.