A parliamentary committee has suggested raising the social media access age from 13 to 16 due to concerns about its negative impact on children’s health. The Telegraph has more.
The Commons education committee has recommended that the age at which children are allowed on to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram should be increased from 13 to 16.
It said the next government should also consider a statutory ban on mobile phones in schools and a total ban on smartphones for under-16s.
Robin Walker, the committee chairman, said: “Excessive screen and smartphone use has a clear negative impact on the mental and physical wellbeing of children and young people.
“Our inquiry heard shocking statistics on the extent of the damage being done to under-18s, particularly those who are already extremely vulnerable, such as those in care.
“Digital age of consent checks are not fit for purpose.
“We heard no evidence demonstrating that 13 year-olds understood the ramifications of sharing personal information online and today’s report urges the Government to increase this age to 16.”
The Online Safety Act requires tech firms to ensure they have effective age checks to ensure children under 13 cannot access social media platforms – with fines worth up to 10% of their global turnover if they fail to do so.
However, the committee said age checks were not robust enough and now was the time for a broader debate on the adequacy of the digital age of consent. …
The committee said tougher guidance on mobile phones in schools and how to manage children’s screen time at home was needed to better protect young people.
It argued that screen time was harmful to children’s mental and physical health, and both schools and parents needed clear guidance from the Government on the issue.
Worth reading in full.
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More state overreach. I think mobile and digital technology and social media are damaging and dangerous but who am I to tell others how to live their lives and how to bring their children up?
Totally right.
This is the thick end of the wedge. The thin end was when the government stepped in to tell parents when their children could smoke and drink, which of course everyone deemed sensible. But once the priciple is established and they have the power, it’s always just a matter of time before it is abused.
At this stage as far as the state is concerned we’re little more than foster parents looking after and paying for kids that the state considers theirs. The state ultimately decides over our kids, whether we like it or not.
The plan is to tell adults whether they can smoke
Our kids were never great boozers (they certainly don’t get that from us) but we certainly made sure there was booze available for parties when required
But let them Vote as soon as they reach 16 – oh the irony !!
Indeed. If they are banned from social media until 16 how will they be propagandised to vote Labour?
It’s the other way around I think.
Social media is actually making kids much more sceptical. Schools still indoctrinate with state sanctioned ideology, but social media is a far more varied landscape.
Who the F do they think they are to dictate peoples lives? Government has a very, very minimal job: make decisions according to events. Decide who to distribute our money to. That is it.
When a Government tries to micromanage peoples lives you know that the society you live in is, to be blunt, fucked. It is not for them to decide, it is up to us, the real people, to decide.
Do I agree with kids having free access to the Internet? No, I do not. Other parents, other grandparents, may well disagree but it has sod all to do with the Government no matter which party.
There is an old saying “Stick to the day job”.
We are indeed in what might be terminal decline into a species of idiot children. It’s all part of the same trend that enabled the “Covid” scam.
100%. The Sheeple merely “maah” and vote the same if they are not stricken with “Long Covid” which is basically “I was an idle git for two years and now can’t be bothered and if I move I feel worn out”.
We’ve seen exactly what they’re capable of and what they think of the population from March 2020 onwards, and these corrupt buggers have not a shred of credibility between them, with very few exceptions. Just look at the interest shown whenever Andrew Bridgen organizes a debate about excess deaths and talks about the vax injured. You can count those in attendance on two hands. So they don’t get to walk away from that epic shitfest, which was all orchestrated by them, smelling of roses.
And what of the “next pandemic”, that these bent sock puppets like to bang on about? We know they’d do it all again if they knew they’d get away with it, because that’s how delusional and psychopathic they are, but I think even they realise by now that people wouldn’t fall for the same garbage lies again. I’d say, going by the evidence of recent history, that the government pose a bigger threat to our kids’ welfare than social media.
I will second that Mogs, particularly the final sentence.
Think of the kiddies has been a tactic of the control freaks since time immemorial, and yet, people still fall for it. It is the false narratives that have an element of truth (there are predators on internet) that fool people the longest. But to most people on here, it is the oldest trick in the book.
Whilst I agree with what you are saying on a broad basis I genuinely believe people would just follow orders all over again. I remember saying to my wife “People will never accept this” and we suddenly found we were the only two who were not. She resorted to wearing a mask so as to not stand out. I wore one once, at her instance, for 30 seconds and shoved it in my pocket.
A memorable moment was going to Wickes. The manager had all his team there and was telling them about how to deal with masking. He called over to me and said “You need to wear a mask sir”. I replied “No I do not, I am exempt”. I was exempt on the basis it was bloody stupid.
I know more than most about masks and their capabilities. Therein lies the real issue here: most people these days want to be told what to do, what to think, what to say. On here we think and act differently. We are the exception.
Hear, hear.
May I disagree with your description of role of government. It is not there to decide how to distribute your money – no one can and will spend your money better than you.
Role of government is very simple and to fold I would say:
What happens when the Government overreaches? The NHS.
The National Hypochondriacs Service, you mean…?
Members of the political class love a ban almost as much as they love a tax. How’s the decades long war on drugs going?
Ask Pfizer
Oh, that’s class.
Your previous post has been removed as has my reply. I’m not happy about that as I think we were both making important points.
I think I am done commenting on this site absent any explanation.
Ignore – wrong article!
Blimey.
“Ignore” will do.
There is an obvious elephant here is there not? I’m not talking about entertainment or social media. What did we oldies do to research something? What is the modern equivalent? What have most of the places we frequented become?
So, do we also ban kids from going to libraries?
My Mom said to me many years ago “If you want to know how to do something, read a book”.
Jesus wept, they’ve got a bloody nerve haven’t they? So the damage done to kids *by the government!* due to lockdowns, remote learning, masking and testing in school, the push to get them injected with toxic crud, all because of a non-existent pandemic, as well as all the inappropriate gender ideology/sexualization stuff, but they suddenly profess to care about kids’ welfare when it comes to social media? This is hypocrisy off the charts!
”…. and both schools and parents needed clear guidance from the Government on the issue.”
And there was me thinking that I was a competent adult, capable of doing my own parenting and instilling standards/boundaries all these years. Crikey, where would I be without ”clear guidance from the Government”? Load of blithering idiots, jeez…
Brilliant Mogs
If you stood as a candidate I’d vote for you. Well, as long as you didn’t stand for Uniparty.
I was about to ask, where are their parents and what are they doing, isn’t this a job for them… but I realised there are few actual parents these days.
And plenty of “do gooders” happy to take the job on
I was thinking to myself when I heard that on the radio: Smart Phones are a vehicle to control people, but a phone isn’t the only way, look at Sweden with its use of microchip implants.
No. Don’t bar anything. Insist that the social media platforms provide easily workable tools to allow parents to decide what their kids can and can’t engage in. If the parents can’t be bothered to do that themselves they could pay someone else to monitor and bar stuff on their behalf. If they really don’t mind what their kids engage in then why should anyone else?
Some things already exist in that vein. My granddaughter is 5 and I often login to YouTube for kids for her on my PC (works on TV as well). Amazon have a kids mode on their Fire tablets. This all means that kids can select things but nothing they “shouldn’t” see.
Netflix et al have profiles which bar certain things based on a parents choice of access.
The point here is the PG rating: Parental Guidance. In a world where most of Parliament wants to turn boys into girls and chop off the bits of girls, well, why would we want the Government to “advice” us?
Government should butt-out. If parents don’t want their kids to engage in something they should take responsibility to make sure they don’t. Governments responsibility should end at mandating the tools be available to parents. Sure parents can use existing parental controls but if that’s too difficult (they can’t be bothered) they can pay someone else to do it for them. It should not be up to a government agency to decide what is or is not suitable for someone else’s kids – the risk is too great when civil services essentially get captured by paedophile trans loons. For those parents who really can’t be bothered – well, I’m sorry for their kids, but I still don’t want government and civil servants deciding what’s acceptable for my family.
I don’t know about anyone else but I have grown tired of people who want to ban things. They seem to think that they have some kind of obligation to define sin, and to police its exclusion from our lives.
The ‘innocence of children’ is not as innocent as it used to be, and that comes from all directions from parents, from the media, from music (esp. hiphop), not just older brothers and sisters as it used to be. Rather, children have, in their grasp, all of human knowledge in a easily accessible form. If we can get them interested in history for example, or reading the works of great people that would be quite useful rather than watching kitty video’s, (Ok, some kitty videos…).
You deserve many more up-votes for this.
Oh hey doesn’t Kier want kiddies to vote age 16? If they work and pay taxes they should have a say, so let them vote. Britain, you must despair to have such idiots running for office. This is the best idea they can come up with. A joke.
There is no way to do an effective age check over the internet. The only way to accomplish such an age restriction is to treat everyone as 13-year old. Ie, this will necessarily limit adults may do and not what children may do. And since then are MPs supposed to interfere with the private lifes of other people’s children?
In my not so humble opinion, people who – in 2024 – still believe the internet is a really scary new thing which must be tightly controlled and censored to prevent Really Bad Stuff™ from happening are a much greater danger to society than teenagers with smart phones. I therefore suggest – as a matter of urgency – that they’re banned from making decisions affecting other people (and from owning smartphones) until they can credibly demontrate that they’ve mentally arrived in the 21st century.
So, we’ll ban them from social media and smart phones until they’re 16, and chuck them in the army when they’re 18, just need a hairbrained scheme to protect them from 16 to 18 now
I suppose they have to come up with something after sitting on a Parliamentary committee for as long as possible.
But what part of that old saying ‘Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted’ have they never heard of?
And how would they enforce it? In addition to the Thought Police, would we now see a bunch of plods designated ‘The Not-So-Smart Phone Police’?