A turf war between people who want to ban social media for teenagers vs: those who want it regulated to the point of Orwellian surveillance — there can be only one!

Pardon the Highlander reference, but I never thought I’d encounter a drama* of child safety activists, so mutually exclusive in their approaches that each cannot allow the other to exist.

On one side the Ghey followers, seeking outright bans on phone & social media access, so post-Brexit children can enjoy the 1970s all over again.

On the other side the Russell team, who’d have nothing to regulate if the Ghey followers win; it’s interesting to see them minimising the Ghey proposals as-if they were intended to apply to schools only.

And of course in the meantime a socially aware and & technically informed government policy should be doing something like the Dutch are doing.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/19/banning-phones-in-englands-schools-will-not-address-online-safety-say-campaigners

[*] new collective noun?

Comments

2 responses to “A turf war between people who want to ban social media for teenagers vs: those who want it regulated to the point of Orwellian surveillance — there can be only one!”

  1. Mark

    Rather interesting if you think about it. One idea would risk ID theft and hacking and restriction of the Internet for everyone due to age verification.

    The other (assuming the way you get a phone is like the person receiving a age restricted package from amazon has to be an adult on delivery) would just restrict kids from important information and potentially give abusive parents more power to abuse there children.

    So it’s endanger the kids or endanger everyone. Either way none of these protect children.

  2. Mark

    Oh on another note, not only are gen z not in favour of using age verification seems those that use it can’t even get past yoti (the leading one).

    https://twitter.com/jess_miers/status/1759697726093369599

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