Our survey: Members convincingly back the new Conservative policy of banning under 16s from social media
This sets a dangerous precedent.
That 64.5 percent of our members survey are in favour of banning under 16’s from social media is quite a sea change. Societally it has ‘something of a journey.’
I have been on it.
Two of my children are over 16. The eldest in their twenties, the second late teens. And they loved and still love their screens.
I definitely allowed a smart phone too soon, and know that it’s my fault when I observe even today that they can spend way too much time just looking at their phones. When they were younger I was using Twitter extensively for work, so I was just as bad, and my example was not a good one. I mention my kids because there is a symbiosis of their generation with the whole phenomenon of social media.
Twitter (now X) and Facebook (Meta) – certainly not the prime choice of today’s younger generation – are now the ‘grandads of social media’ and they are still only 20 and 22 years old. Now there’s Tik-Tok, Instagram, and Snapchat, who if they were children under the ban the Conservatives are looking at for under 16’s would not be able to use themselves as they are way too young!
These companies grew up with my kids. And I was just as fascinated by it.
Early adopters of social media were constantly learning and finding new ways to use it. Experimenting with how different behaviours and styles could be created, which say the advent of the meme, the ‘sh*tpost’, ratioing, YOLO, ROFL and now a lexicon of user generated slang, methods and motivations that would making learning Hungarian seem easy.
However all the time the developers and owners, of these increasingly powerful behemoths were learning all about us. And we handed so much to them without giving it a second thought or every wondering what that might ultimately mean.
This is not a piece about Digital ID, but one of the biggest arguments levelled at the idea is that we already effectively have it. All packaged up in those ever more sophisticated slices of metal and plastic we seem not to be able to do without, we constantly spray out data we often have no idea we’ve tacitly agreed to give away.
Nine years ago I started working at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England under Anne Longfield, and then Dame Rachel de Souza. The single most common question we were asked by politicians, the media, teachers, just ordinary members of the public either officially or just privately was “do you think it’s ok for my kids to be spending so much time online, on their phones?”
The answer by the way is less about time and quantity, but light touch supervision and quality, but that’s never going to be and effective slogan. Besides we did not believe ‘it was ok’ but not everyone agreed. Age verification became a battle over adult privacy. Privacy primacy became a locked door to the …
This sets a dangerous precedent.
That 64.5 percent of our members survey are in favour of banning under 16’s from social media is quite a sea change. Societally it has ‘something of a journey.’
I have been on it.
Two of my children are over 16. The eldest in their twenties, the second late teens. And they loved and still love their screens.
I definitely allowed a smart phone too soon, and know that it’s my fault when I observe even today that they can spend way too much time just looking at their phones. When they were younger I was using Twitter extensively for work, so I was just as bad, and my example was not a good one. I mention my kids because there is a symbiosis of their generation with the whole phenomenon of social media.
Twitter (now X) and Facebook (Meta) – certainly not the prime choice of today’s younger generation – are now the ‘grandads of social media’ and they are still only 20 and 22 years old. Now there’s Tik-Tok, Instagram, and Snapchat, who if they were children under the ban the Conservatives are looking at for under 16’s would not be able to use themselves as they are way too young!
These companies grew up with my kids. And I was just as fascinated by it.
Early adopters of social media were constantly learning and finding new ways to use it. Experimenting with how different behaviours and styles could be created, which say the advent of the meme, the ‘sh*tpost’, ratioing, YOLO, ROFL and now a lexicon of user generated slang, methods and motivations that would making learning Hungarian seem easy.
However all the time the developers and owners, of these increasingly powerful behemoths were learning all about us. And we handed so much to them without giving it a second thought or every wondering what that might ultimately mean.
This is not a piece about Digital ID, but one of the biggest arguments levelled at the idea is that we already effectively have it. All packaged up in those ever more sophisticated slices of metal and plastic we seem not to be able to do without, we constantly spray out data we often have no idea we’ve tacitly agreed to give away.
Nine years ago I started working at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England under Anne Longfield, and then Dame Rachel de Souza. The single most common question we were asked by politicians, the media, teachers, just ordinary members of the public either officially or just privately was “do you think it’s ok for my kids to be spending so much time online, on their phones?”
The answer by the way is less about time and quantity, but light touch supervision and quality, but that’s never going to be and effective slogan. Besides we did not believe ‘it was ok’ but not everyone agreed. Age verification became a battle over adult privacy. Privacy primacy became a locked door to the …
Our survey: Members convincingly back the new Conservative policy of banning under 16s from social media
This sets a dangerous precedent.
That 64.5 percent of our members survey are in favour of banning under 16’s from social media is quite a sea change. Societally it has ‘something of a journey.’
I have been on it.
Two of my children are over 16. The eldest in their twenties, the second late teens. And they loved and still love their screens.
I definitely allowed a smart phone too soon, and know that it’s my fault when I observe even today that they can spend way too much time just looking at their phones. When they were younger I was using Twitter extensively for work, so I was just as bad, and my example was not a good one. I mention my kids because there is a symbiosis of their generation with the whole phenomenon of social media.
Twitter (now X) and Facebook (Meta) – certainly not the prime choice of today’s younger generation – are now the ‘grandads of social media’ and they are still only 20 and 22 years old. Now there’s Tik-Tok, Instagram, and Snapchat, who if they were children under the ban the Conservatives are looking at for under 16’s would not be able to use themselves as they are way too young!
These companies grew up with my kids. And I was just as fascinated by it.
Early adopters of social media were constantly learning and finding new ways to use it. Experimenting with how different behaviours and styles could be created, which say the advent of the meme, the ‘sh*tpost’, ratioing, YOLO, ROFL and now a lexicon of user generated slang, methods and motivations that would making learning Hungarian seem easy.
However all the time the developers and owners, of these increasingly powerful behemoths were learning all about us. And we handed so much to them without giving it a second thought or every wondering what that might ultimately mean.
This is not a piece about Digital ID, but one of the biggest arguments levelled at the idea is that we already effectively have it. All packaged up in those ever more sophisticated slices of metal and plastic we seem not to be able to do without, we constantly spray out data we often have no idea we’ve tacitly agreed to give away.
Nine years ago I started working at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England under Anne Longfield, and then Dame Rachel de Souza. The single most common question we were asked by politicians, the media, teachers, just ordinary members of the public either officially or just privately was “do you think it’s ok for my kids to be spending so much time online, on their phones?”
The answer by the way is less about time and quantity, but light touch supervision and quality, but that’s never going to be and effective slogan. Besides we did not believe ‘it was ok’ but not everyone agreed. Age verification became a battle over adult privacy. Privacy primacy became a locked door to the …
