Case No. LV21C01426

34.Over the last couple of years or so, there has been an exponential growth in use of social media. I note the most recent draft bill dealing with children’s access to social media platforms aims to limit the ability of a child to open an account to 13 years old. I make no comment on the merit or efficacy of this aspiration. I do take judicial notice however that my experience of conducting many children cases is that children much younger than this regularly access social media and have a detailed understanding as to how to make it work for them. The children involved in this case are very young, but W is 7 ½. It will not be long before W (if he doesn’t already) will have access to all sorts of means to contact his siblings. Who knows what methods will be available in a very short period? I do not know of any research in this area, but I do have judicial experience of adoptions breaking down where the child’s use of social media to make covert contact with birth parents has contributed to the breakdown. In one such case the contact was instigated by a sibling who located the adopted child via social media with disastrous effects. In that case it was the secrecy of the contact that caused the problem rather than the contact itself. I do wonder, therefore, whether in this case the issue of sibling contact is being treated in a blinkered way.