To think we absolutely have to ban social media for under 16s.

[Bitethehandthatfeedsyou]

I just don’t understand with all evidence that we have to say how awful it is for young people why we’re not banning in for under 16s. I’ve not spoken to 1 parent who wouldn’t be in favour of it.

I do know it’s not a silver bullet and there is ann idea that young people would be penalised for big tech not taking responsibility for exploiting children.

Quite rightly smoking, vaping and alcohol are out of bounds for under 18s and arguably access to social media and a young age is as harmful / more harmful than any of these.

On a cynical note too, surely it would be a huge vote winner for whichever party goes about implementing it too.

What other parental rights would you like to give up?

What would the punishment be? A fine? Jail? Kids removed by SS?

Yep. All that. And also preventative police raids to check everyone's devices. Because clearly we cannot leave without regulations and enforcement.

If parents are so against, why are they allowing it? My dc don’t have TikTok (dd1 does but she’s 17 and only got it last summer). Parent your children.

The majority are not. A ban would at least push the issue more forcefully at parents who minimise the damaging impact of social media on young teens. And if they choose to ignore it then hopefully there would be implications for them.

A thought experiment.

Imagine that our next Prime minister is the one that gives you creeps now. (Farage, or Corbyn, or anyone who you definitely would not trust).
What you are suggesting with the ban is to give away your power and authority to that government. Do you feel THAT powerless and incompetent at parenting?

To those of you suggesting that having an argument 'but that is illegal' will help with your child relationship - If bike helmets and seatbelts were not mandatory - would you not use them? If you still would - how would you enforce it? Use the same power. If you would not, then I don't get you - you are not worried about your children's physical safety, why worry about some social media.

Because a lot of parents won’t parent their children. They look to teachers, councils and the state to undertake the hard decisions they won’t make usually via laws and rules.
There is no reason for an u16 year old to have TikTok. There is no practical, educational or emotional reason to watch the app. Why do parents allow their children access it? It is documented beyond any doubt that it has a negative impact on the brain (adult brains too). Yet parents allow their barely teenage children watch it unsupervised. Then they call on schools or government to limit access to it.
Just remove it from your child’s phone. End of. It’s done. It’s gone. What’s the issue?

Wow, not much shocks me these days but the perpetrator of this being made head boy in the same year made me gasp. I would go nuclear. WTF.

Yep, just like drugs, alcohol and smoking. Buy them some at age, what 9+? Or at least from high school, that’s reasonable, right? Everyone else is doing it. And make sure it’s in their pocket/bag 24/7 until they’re adults

Oh I did. Took phones in every night and after school so they could focus on homework which got increasingly difficult as white board pictures of tasks set alongside everything else they needed was on portals( that needs to stop). Had parental controls and even switched the WiFi off but that proved difficult for our work.Monitored sites too. TikTok wasn’t a thing then.

However in amongst my “parenting” as you put it my dc exchanged info on getting round parental controls and new sites, bought cheap burner phones etc on the school bus.

My son ended up being groomed and sexually abused online by paedophile gangs. I am wrestling with a lot but one thing I’m not wrestling with is knowing I did my absolute best and did parent my child.

Yes it’s soooo easy.🙄

Parent removes an app, dangers to children from SM are all gone- except they’re not.

A lot of parents are half wits. I read about an 11 year old who was being groomed online and taking nude photos. She went on to meet some men and got sexually assaulted. At no point did her mother take away her phone.

We can't invade their privacy! They need their phone! They get cross if I take away their tech!

Meanwhile primary school children are watching hard core porn and sexually assaulting their classmates.

All you can do is teach them to be sensible. Yeah right.

I’m not a half wit and I did take my son’s phone. Pardophiles and tech savvy kids can get around parents.

My comment wasn't specifically directed at you.

It’s a pretty rude and unfair comment. Parents are trying in an impossible situation.

IMO parents who allow children unfettered access to the internet should be locked up for neglect. Half wits is polite.

It doesn’t make any difference. You can try all you like but as things currently stand children and paedophiles will get round it.

A six year old won't become addicted to hard core porn if they have no means to access it.

I havent read the full thread, but no, it shouldnt be banned.

I have 3 kids, now adult/older teens. One of my children is very outdoorsy, would be out from sunrise to sunset given the chance. Two of my children are not, they are into gaming, and tech, bright brilliant kids, strong in maths and science, they want to know how stuff works, they learn quickly in logical fact based subjects. Its what they love - i am similar. Growing up they struggled in school, as their passions differ from that of their peers. The secondry school they are in is relatively small for a secondry, so small social circles. My kids started gaming on DS's when they were small. Yes game time was limited back then, but they loved it, puzzle based adventure games especially. Games where it wasnt just aim and kill, games where they had to figure out solutions to progress. They moved on from the to Minecraft. Minecraft isnt just this block building game where you can create a world, minecraft is almost fully customiseable, you can create your own game, within a game, and open these worlds up to people. When my kids discovered private minecraft servers, they also found their peers. In the past, i would hear people say "you will find your people at uni" when you enter a subject attractive to people who think and have passions like you. My kids found their people earlier, thanks to social platforms. They play with kids and now adults from all over the world. They turn to these friends for help, for fun. They have school friends, they go outside, they meet up to go to the cinema, they have the social life youd expect from a teenager. But the friends that share their passions, are internet friends.

The internet has evil people on it, no doubt, but the internet is also filled with positivity and acceptence in the right areas. What our job as parent is, is to be approachable, to have our kids share with us who they mix with online, the negatives and the postives. I have spent evenings with my kids online friends, talking, laughing, playing silly party style games, and getting to know them. Some of them i have been chatting to now for nearly 10 years, they are amazing, intelligent people. Genuine friendships can be formed. Some of my own closest friends are people i met on a parenting forum way back in 2002, people i still talk to daily. We need to give our kids the skills to navigate the internet, and social media, and to be there for them to direct and help them navigate through the negatives.

Id highly recommend a netflix documentry called The Remarkable Life of Ibelin to show you just how powerful the internet can be, how the online social relationships can impact a persons life, and how valued these friendships can be. Yes theres downsides, there is to everything, but theres also positives that get cast aside all to frequently.

I'd support an official ban to send a message that it is socially not acceptable. As parents however we need to strictly supervise their phone use, read their messages regularly, make sure they don't join large WA groups and not allow them to use insta TT etc. You need to educate them too though show them how tt and YouTube can brain rot and the dynamic that can happen when communicating in groups online. These will be good life skills.

I find it interesting that some young teenagers from very strict families have completely open access to the internet. Even when they just own a dumb phone their parents never check what they're up to on the messaging apps or the browsers search history. So weird. I tell my kids that what ever they are writing to their friends is also likey to be read by some parents and can be screenshot and shared beyond the groups you are in. I have taught them about digital footprint and to be careful what kind of footprint they leave.

How? Even primary schools are struggling with managing with the fallout of all you’ve listed in the first paragraph.

Do people seriously think checking the phone of a 14/15 year old daily is feasible. Have you not heard of hidden accounts and burner phones?

We were very lucky, my kids were born in the early 2000s meaning they have grown up with the evolution of social media. They have seen the addictive nature and self regulated because that is what they were used to doing.

Data was bloody expensive in the early days. Imagine paying actual £££ every time you look at a makeup tutorial, or kittens falling over. Meant looking at needs rather than wants....

Data protection was also talked about a lot more (DH and I worked in computing), so WiFi (and other) passwords change regularly. It all made people think about what they were wanting to access, and why.

Perhaps some sort of "cost" per use would return kids to thinking about their access. Doom scrolling insta/meta/snapchat "costing" 200x homework websites and a running total on screen...

The type of kids who go to great lengths to hide accounts and buy burner phones aren’t exactly the type who will listen to a government law telling them they can’t have a phone until they’re 16/18.

Because no one wants their child to be the weird kid who isn’t allowed the thing everyone else has.

So he’d have ignore government laws anyway? Like kids buying alcohol in the 1990s. We found ways around the law.