Flick 🇬🇧 on Nostr: The question here is not whether children should have access to social media or be ...

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/07/why-the-state-shouldnt-ban-smartphones-for-teens/

The question here is not whether children should have access to social media or be free to search the internet as they please. The question is who should be making those decisions. The ultimate responsibility for decisions about children’s online activity should really rest with parents, not the state. […]

Esther Ghey’s call for state-mandated software to flag up ‘inappropriate’ material raises the same problems. After all, who exactly would decide what constitutes inappropriate content? It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the category of ‘inappropriate’ could expand to political content. After all, given the well-known biases now permeating the institutions of the British state, from schools to the civil service, ‘inappropriate’ could mean gender-critical content, or material challenging critical race theory. In contrast, an app with these biases is unlikely to flag up content promoting, say, gender transitioning, even though this would likely alarm many ordinary parents.

If parents are worried about what their kids are doing online, then they need to step up. They can start to regulate their children’s smartphone use themselves. They can even stop them from having a smartphone at all if they want to. They don’t need the government to do any of this for them.