That would leave them with dumb phones, sans apps and the internet, just texts and phone calls.
Remember the old Nokia? Or Alcatels? They came in that weird light orangey-peachy colour and a purpley-blue.
David Seymour's talking about this after a blog post suggesting it'd be easier, and less restrictive for everyone else, if we banned the hardware not the software.
Make smartphones like cigarettes or beer – if you saw a 12-year-old with one, you'd judge the parents, wouldn't you?
At present, parents hand them out like candy, caving by osmosis to the their kid's peer pressure to own one.
The social media bans don't seem to work very well —as we've spoken about before— half the Aussie kids get around theirs.
Where there's a will, there's a way.
Banning the actual device itself does, on the face of it, make more sense.
You can still communicate, but not with the entire world. And not with the entire sum of human knowledge —good and bad— at your unsupervised fingertips.
This way, adults can keep using social media and not have to use some ID or date of birth test to log in.
Which all sounds great. Except the real problem here is parents themselves.
They're often the ones on their phones and ignoring their kids in the first place.
If you were a child, wouldn't you want to be doing whatever your parents are doing too?
It doesn't really matter what the law says, and changing it won't change everything, it's ultimately up to adults raising those kids to teach them right from wrong, good from bad, and whether 8 hours a day doom scrolling is a behaviour that's acceptable – for them or their kids.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
There is no need for a ban on social media access. It is up to parents to be parents.
I was a systems engineer, hey I was even involved in software for phones and smartcards, so am familiar with whether a software or hardware solution is the most appropriate. I opt to use a dumb phone because I realise that I only really need to make calls or use texts and what is more, the flip just slips into my pocket when not in use. I use the laptop when I need anything else. Based on real need, do kids actually require anything more that a dumb phone?
The EU is already dealing with this by requiring meta to eliminate addictive features like infinite scrolling from its platforms. If you want to reduce harms require structural changes from those who provide the harmful product. This is the remit of government. The rest is the responsibility of parents.
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