DO NOT give your kid a smartphone this Christmas

Why do people insist on taking any advice whatsoever from social media!?? You do see the irony of using a video on social media to argue against the use of smart phones children's access to social media, don't you?

But, to refer to the points he was making;

1. Who on earth gives their child a smartphone without any parental controls or family monitoring on it?

2. You DO understand that it's a parents responsibility to ensure that whatever a child has access to, whether that is television, video games or a smartphone, is suitably limited?

3. What a load of garbage! EVERYTHING is a distraction device! Again, it's up to the parents to ensure that their child uses whatever technology they have available to them in a responsible manner!

If you're going to try and advise others on how to raise their children, use something with more credibility than an instagram video!!

Riddle me this people who think such law could work.

First of all, social media is not the same as alcohol, smoking and drugs because it's free, I can literally go and create 1000 accounts on twitter, tiktok and so on.

So how exactly you stop people under 16 from accessing it? Force government to regulate internet as a whole? Make all online accounts be based on your government social number? Literally give the government more power to know everything you do and where you are?

On the physical side, yeah, some parents can take away their children smartphone, but guess what? These parents are the minority, you really think government will go out of their way to prosecute parents who give their children smartphone? They barely have resources to deal with real crimes.

And then there's the social side, people can't agree on more dumb banal stuff, you really think vast majority will agree with this? They won't.

Cost of living only rises, economy only gets worse, people need to work more and more and can barely make money as it is, who will go out of their way to see if random children are using social media? If they have smartphone?

Smartphones are small, any adult can let a child use theirs when they're out of sight and nobody would notice, children could hide a smartphone somewhere and only use it when they think they're safe, how do you even deal with that? Make everyone stalk children? Which will only help pedophiles since nobody will question an adult following a child? Create a secret police to look over everyone shoulder?

Such law will never work because it's not enforceable at any level, it's simply impossible.

What could be done and even I agree with it is making a law to stop children from using smartphone at school, a child has one? They give it to the teacher to lock it up, school want to use app to more easily manage children? The parents use the app instead of the child.

Making laws for controlled environment like school would still be hard but could work, but something to affect the whole society? Literally impossible.

@cottoncandy260
Your equating the uprise in smartphone use amongst children to playing dungeons and dragons??

That is literally the most hilarious and most worrying thing I’ve read on the whole of this thread. You are seriously naive.

I guess reading comprehension is hard, at nk point I said D&D is the same as smartphone, I said the hysteria is the same.

But it’s not for the majority of the population, it’s just for children. And it’s about stalling their access to social media, not completely preventing it.

It will affect majority of population because some idiots think criminalizing and punishing people will somehow make things better.

Yes of course it will be the ‘forbidden fruit’ like alcohol and drugs are currently but if society views it differently- as something harmful rather than beneficial - the widespread use of it will reduce

Vast majority of people will never see it at the same level as alcohol and drugs, ever.

If everyone viewed a phone as a high risk object to give a developing brain, we would at least be in a better position to protect our children.

And here is where everything falls apart, vast majority of people won't care about it because it's the parents job to stop children from accessing social media, not society.

Not to mention that vast majority of people won't care about what other people children are doing, smartphones and social media are not even close to alcohol, smoking or drugs, you think some random adult will look over the shoulder of children to see if they're looking at social media? You think random adults will keep an eye if children have smartphone?

They won't, because not only it's not their job to take care of someone else children, they might also be accused of being a creep harassing children.

Trying to ban social media or smartphone will simply be a second version of alcohol prohibition, it'll fail completely because most people won't help on what you want to happen, some will even actively work against it.

Thinking such law could work is the definition of naive and being out of touch with reality, because it completely ignores how people will actually act in their daily life.

Even people who is in favor of it in practice would do nothing, because guess what? Saying you agree banning social media or smartphones for anyone under 16 is easy, actually acting on it is hard and too much trouble, nobody will go out of their way to do it except hysterical parents or people who love to put their nose into other people lives, vast majority will say "fuck it" and go on with their lives cause they don't have time to parent someone else children.

But it’s not for the majority of the population, it’s just for children. And it’s about stalling their access to social media, not completely preventing it.

Yes of course it will be the ‘forbidden fruit’ like alcohol and drugs are currently but if society views it differently- as something harmful rather than beneficial - the widespread use of it will reduce. That certainly doesn’t mean no young teenager will ever be able to access social media but I think if there are certain changes in legislation it will become more frowned upon by others, particularly parents. There would definitely be a shift in behaviour towards phones and young teens/children.

Smoking in public places used to be widely accepted- not now. Driving with no seatbelts or child seats was done day in, day out. Not now. Smacking and corporal punishment was perfectly acceptable. Not now. Christ, the whole history of humankind has evolved and refined by changing our attitudes towards things often with introducing different legislation.

Making social media illegal for under 16s may not be practical, you’re right, but making noises towards this sort of safeguarding legislation highlights how seriously people are starting to take it. If everyone viewed a phone as a high risk object to give a developing brain, we would at least be in a better position to protect our children.

Your equating the uprise in smartphone use amongst children to playing dungeons and dragons??

That is literally the most hilarious and most worrying thing I’ve read on the whole of this thread. You are seriously naive.

😂
"Change can and will happen"

So you are going to control the whole world?

Things like the dark web and porn don't even require an app or social media.

15 year olds aren't even that fussed about Instagram and Facebook is for old people apparently. Tiktok you can watch without the app.

The idea of restricting social media or smartphones till kids are 16 is frankly terrifying. It will be forbidden fruit and instead of being sensibly introduced to it all over many years, you're going to suddenly open Pandora's box in the middle of GCSE revision and A levels. That's going to work well.

Also rather messes things up for kids doing tech-related GCSEs/BTECs. Creative Media Production for example requires a smart phone for most of the practical work.

My DD turns 16 next year so none of this will ever apply to me, but I would absolutely not be stopping her from having a smartphone - and would just use SEN access arrangements to get an exemption.

Parents need to do more parenting - educate yourself on how the internet works, how different apps function, how to lock down and restrict access. Pick your child's phone up at random intervals, check their internet history, check their messages, unstall software that means you can approve apps or turn it off remotely.

Maybe also ensure your child has a more balanced life - lots of sport, dance, drama, music, walks, trips to museums etc. If your child is spending all weekend glued to their phone (when I was a teen it was 'glued to the TV') then try getting them out the door and doing something more constructive. And if you can't manage that with your 11-15 year old, just think how much less control you'll have with your 16 year old.

@RedToothBrush
They're a troll or a truly hysterical deranged person completely out of touch with reality

You also havent addressed my point about why can't the current law as it exists be used?

Nicely dodged there. Complete with a Christmas flounce.

Stop atting me.

It's rude and aggressive.

@RedToothBrush Explain it to yourself. I’ve said all I’m going to say, at length. Feel free to go back and read all of my posts. You are wrong. Change can and will happen. It needs to happen. Some random on the internet being ignorant and confused isn’t going to change that.

Have a nice Christmas. I’m off to start my holidays.

Instead of lecturing me on morality and whether I think x or y is bad, can you explain to me why the existing legislation on child cruelty wouldn't cover the hypothetical scenarios you are referring to?

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/23-24/12/part/I/crossheading/offences

Children and Young Person's Act 1933
Cruelty to persons under sixteen.
(1)If any person who has attained the age of sixteen years and [has responsibility for] any child or young person under that age, wilfully assaults, ill-treats (whether physically or otherwise)], neglects, abandons, or exposes him, or causes or procures him to be assaulted, ill-treated (whether physically or otherwise)], neglected, abandoned, or exposed, in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to health (whether the suffering or injury is of a physical or a psychological nature)], that person shall be guilty of [an offence], and shall be liable—

(a)on conviction on indictment, to a fine . . . or alternatively, . . . , or in addition thereto, to imprisonment for any term not exceeding 14 years;

(b)on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding [£400] pounds, or alternatively, . . . , or in addition thereto, to imprisonment for any term not exceeding six months.

I genuinely don't see how banning mobile phones adds anything to our existing laws apart from a lot of additional problems.

If the police actually wanted to do something I believe they have grounds already to do so. The law may or may not have already been applied in this manner. I have no idea. I do think it could be though and maybe suggesting it could be might focus a few minds.

Certainly, becoming aware that a child was accessing the dark web would be a safeguarding issue and would be treated as such.

A child merely being caught with a smartphone ties up too many resources and has too many negative unintended consequences. Ultimately that would leave police with less resources to deal with the most vulnerable kids. I am guessing that in a lot of cases the police catching a kid with a mobile would, at most, result in a warning because it's not really in the public interest to otherwise pursue. Even finest jam the courts and are going to impact hardest on the most vulnerable kids.

I therefore think banning mobiles for teens is a clumsy way to try and solve a complex problem and it'd be doomed to fail. It would not serve to protect children and is more likely to result in harms to particularly vulnerable children who are already at risk (The issue of how gangs operate needs to be thought about in this context). That DOESN'T mean I don't think action isn't required. It means I think a different response is required to the one you suggest.

@RedToothBrush

Don’t you think allowing your kids to access the dark web and view snuff porn ( a real case I’ve seen) is neglectful? It’s not about just giving them the phone. It’s the people giving the phone to children as young as five and putting no restrictions on it. They should be prosecuted for neglect. Absolutely.

We wouldn’t have these issues if feckless parents cared one jot about what their kids are up to. It’s not just giving the phone.

I cannot believe people are so ignorant as to not understand properly what is happening out there with teens and mobiles and social media. No one is talking about stopping everyone from having one, just make people wait until they are 16. Sheesh!

But absolutely fuck vulnerable kids, right. So long as your precious gets to use Instagram.

Jailing parents for giving their kids a mobile phone!

Wow.

That's not even remotely proportionate. That's draconian to a point that actually pretty disturbing.

A few things here in terms of practicalities.

This is all about children right? And doing things in the best interests of children. So please explain to me how it's in the best interests of vulnerable children we believe are being harmed by mobile phones are better off, if their parents have been criminalised? This risks putting kids into care due to mobile phones.

The trouble with criminalising something so widespread is that you have to have a) public consent to enforce it b) society has to benefit from the ban in a significant way c) it has to be realistically enforceable.

The issue we have here is
a) we have an overflowing criminal justice system and no space in jail. To a point that sex offenders are being released early. So where exactly are you intending to put these parents in jail?

b) the court system is so overloaded that cases are backlogged already by years. A crime that happens now, is unlikely to get a court date this side of 2027 at this point. So if you have a 12 year old kid with a mobile phone, mum and dad are unlikely to end up in jail much before the kids 15th birthday! I fail to see how that solves the problem.

c) if this is about an issue with harms to children surely the process should be immediate intervention by social services rather than criminalisation. Otherwise you just leave the kid in what you deem to be a harmful situation. We already have a shortage of social workers and foster care places. Putting every kid exposed to mobile phones into this system, really isn't going to help anyone. And frankly any incident which is significantly serious enough in terms of child neglect with exposure to things via a mobile will ALREADY end up brought to the attention of social services / police anyway under existing safeguarding protocols.

d) in terms of public consent for this, you get a couple of fairly middle class parents facing jail / removal of kids just for having a mobile phone doing sadface in the newspaper and the whole thing will fall apart and because kryptonite for dodgy political parties who will use it to gain traction. It's really not a vote winning policy. You just get deeply unfavourable headlines about the police using all their time to harass kids rather than catching actual criminals. Society accepts that drugs are bad via public consensus. Their use is widespread but not widespread enough to risk running into issues over public consent due to demand. There's little danger of a public backlash.

e) it's going to lead to kids being more vulnerable because mobiles will become illicit - and thus attractive - and vulnerable to people willing to supply a phone to suck kids into more concerning criminal activities. "Here have a free iPhone. Right now you can deal my drugs for me too." How does that improve where we are?

f) a ban will disproportionately criminalise poorer families. The rich family can just pay off the fine, kid gets mobile back in school as a status item. Poor family can't pay the fine, parents get jailed. Kid ends up looked down on for not being rich enough to have the status symbol plus kid is now in the care system.

g) kid has a mobile they shouldn't have and exposed to something harmful. What do they do? They worry about their parents not just telling them off for being stupid (they wouldn't but the fear is there) but they worry that their parents is going to be jailed because they have a mobile. So they are less likely to speak to an adult about grooming or sexual exploitation. You leave them altogether more vulnerable and unwilling to report criminal activities - and this is already something we need to work on and improve.

Yes we should have laws, but laws have to work without unintended consequences and they have to improve society.

There are some laws that just create more problems than they solve. The comparison with the prohibition era is the best I can think of. Banning alcohol rather than fixing social ills, was a driver of much more criminal activity and much more serious criminal acts.

Banning mobile phones is similar. It only works if it's widely supported by parents on a soft level. If you start to introduce punishments you risk driving kids in trouble into a much worse scenario. A ban risks eroding trust between schools and pupils. It therefore has to be pretty much only schools are prohibited from requiring them or using apps and having a no phones policy. Going beyond that, you risk creating a problem that didn't previously exist. Why do you need a law rather than a Department of Education directive over mobile phone use? Kids who get caught up in something very dodgy should already be covered by safeguarding protocols anyway, without the added fear of criminalisation.

We have laws because the public want them and because we think they make our society better. Without widespread public consensus and an achievable target for a law it's doomed to fail. Seatbelts in cars works because the public understands that it's for their own safety and there's a tangible recordable benefit from a reduction in deaths AND the negative impact of seatbelts is negligible / none existent. Rape is understood to be bad and wrong, so we support the law. Where it fails is where men fail to respect this and because the likelihood of prosecution is minimal. But the law itself has public consensus.

Mobile phones fall into this space where we understand they are useful and we like them. There's an understanding that they have helped society. Adults are unlikely to give them up. That isn't a great starting point for building public consensus to ban them for children. It's only when you hit a tipping point when adults want to give them up in sufficient numbers that a criminal ban for kids starts to make sense. (See smoking) Otherwise keep bans under educational jurisdiction...

@ForGreyKoala - I'm not sure how we survived, the biggest threat I had on the walk home from school was from horrible bullying girls, and pulling out my iPhone and calling my mum wouldn't have saved me.

I'm not against tracking DC, DD and I track each other, or kids communicating with each other by group texts, but 11yos don't need a smartphone for either of those.

I do think travel companies etc need to keep providing ways to use their services without the need of a smartphone. Lockdown seemed to push society towards the use of smartphones for almost everything, and I don't think it would be a bad thing for there to be a push back against that.

Goodness, I wonder how those of us who lived in a time before smartphones, and walked to and from school at a much earlier age, managed to survive.

I think this is excellent advice.

It's too late because any parent who's bought their child a phone for Christmas isn't going to be returning it a few days before Christmas.

I don't even agree with giving kids phones but a post like this is way too late to change anyone's mind.

AirTags use Bluetooth to communicate their location to nearby Apple devices, which then send the location to iCloud. The owner can view the location in the Find My app on their iPhone or iPad.

So the tag stops communicating if they’re not in close proximity to smartphones.

No smartphone = high chance of no tracking, therefore pointless.

Check in where?

Tags don't work rurally - they need to check in with smart phones.

Get him a flip phone and an Apple tag on his rucksack. Sorted.

Name one thing, that the majority of the population did every day for years, that was successfully outlawed (excluding North Korea of course)

@Bontonbonbon
Your argument doesn't work at various levels, but I'll use only three arguments right now

One - being outlawed is meaningless cause people will still do it, adults are still free to use social media, and vast majority will in practice ignore the law and let their children use their smartphone.

Point, drugs are outlawed, and we still have a massive world wide issue with drugs,

Murder is also outlawed, and it still happens all the fucking time.

Driving while drunk is also outlawed, and guess what, still happens.

Something being outlawed is not the big thing you think it is, when people want to do something they will do it, fact that you can access any and all social media with the touch of a finger anywhere at any time just makes it impossible to stop.

Two - goverment simply don't have resources to enforce such law, that's a absolute objective fact, they don't have resources to do infinitely more important stuff, they won't waste resources on this, at best it'll depend completely on other people telling the police about it.

Which in itself opens other problems, teachers are already overwoked and stretched thin as it is, dealing with problematic parents and children, you really think they'll waste their time with calling the police due to social media?

And then there's the legal side of the issue, cops are stretch thin and can barely deal with crimes as it is, prosecuts and legal system is clogged with a bazillion of cases, you really think they'll care about fucking social media when there's countless of other crimes that are infinitely more important?

Three - smartphones are basically universal, effectively everyone worldwide has one, you simply can't stop children from accessing social media in some way because it's still going to be around them all the fucking time.

Not to mention another issue, vast majority of people will think the law is a joke and even openly break it, what, you think you can arrest everyone due to fucking social media? Even fine every single one is impossible.

It's not enforceable, plain and simple.

By your logic we should literally why bother outlawing anything. Too inconvenient, why bother?

By your own ligic drugs, murder and rape shouldn't be outlawed anymore, they still happen after all

If you can’t see that the point it to encourage the majority not to engage in a damaging behaviour then I can’t help you.

Damaging behaviour? You mean like alcohol, smoking, drugs, and a bunch of other stuff that people still do?

Majority of people in practice won't give a fuck about such law.

There is always a crazy hardcore of people who believe their personal rights override everyone else’s rights and safety.

You mean like people who think they can ban social media and make everyone step on each other rights by calling the police cause gasp,their children used social media?

That’s what the police and court system is for.

Police and court system are for real crimes, not to raise children of incompetent and lazy parents who can't teach them how to manage a smartphone.

It would actually probably be cheaper the pursue these people rather than the thousands of cases rooted in teen social media use.

Making the police and prosecutor waste time on children using social media isn't cheap, police and justice system doing their job is actually very expensive and time consuming, which is why they're stretched thin and don't waste their time when the cases aren't worth or can't be proved.