These morons just don’t get it.
MPs have urged the next government to consider a total ban on smartphones for under 16-year-olds and a statutory ban on mobile phone use in schools as part of a crackdown on screen time for children.
Members of the House of Commons education committee made the recommendations in a report into the impact of screen time on education and wellbeing, which also called on ministers to raise the threshold for opening a social media account to 16.
Al Capone anyone? These fuckwits are still so stupid they think that making a law banning something will stop it happening. How, exactly will this work? Parents will buy phones and give them to their children, just as parents have done for a long time with alcohol. I was drinking cider at the age of twelve under supervision, for example. Yet buying alcohol for minors is an offence – even if the end result is responsible drinking. The same with phones. This issue is entirely a parental responsibility. It has nothing to do with MPs and they need to fuck off and die. Preferably painfully in a dirty ditch.
The BBC News article on it shows that parents aren’t behind this because of their need to be in an instant contact with their child in a way that my parents would have found unthinkable.
Which got me thinking about what this said about the change in society in the last fifty years.
Presumably all of the country’s actual problems have been sorted. Inflation, the economy, law and order, illegal immigration, all sorted out?
As with all kinds of technology, smart phones are just a vehicle for either good or bad content. My thought is that our so called rulers are exceeding their authority yet again. Just as with cars and heating systems, what phone people provide for their offspring is none of their business. Of course, if they pass a law and everyone ignores it our worthless coppers will be delighted to be able to hassle teenagers rather than dealing with actual criminals.
Child enters school and places mobile phone in named container. Phone returned as child leaves school. Simple.
Child refuses to hand phone over. Child refused entry to school and parent contacted.
Simple.
This system operates at my grandson’s school, and has done so for years without any problems, apart from a few incidents when it began.
Personally, I think letting kids run riot on “social media”* is bloody stupid, but I don’t see what the government can do about it. Don’t get me wrong; I can see dozens of ways the government can make life more difficult, miserable, and expensive for the rest of us, but – as usual – none that would actually work.
As you say, people need to do it themselves. Remember that “democracy” thing? I’ve said for years that it’s bollocks. We don’t rule ourselves; we contract all our ruling out to political corporations and let them get on with it. And look how that’s turned out. Banning people from giving pocket computers to kids now.
*It really is an ugly, chilling, expression. Remember when the internet buzzword was “disintermediation”? The Net will get you right to the source without any middlemen twisting the words. Happy days. But now even your social interactions are mediated.
Our school makes children lock their phones away. If parents need to contact children or vise versa the office will do it. The reason they brought it in was the principal and teachers realised as they walked through the school at playtime no one was interacting with each other. Children were just on their phones. Some parents were not happy but when they realised why the rules were introduced they seemed to get it. As for banning children under 16 opening up online accounts, I’m sure they’ll create false identities and get round that.
It is illegal to have even consensual sex under the age of 16, but that law never results in prosecutions, even when a 14/15-year-old girl is pregnant and it’s a slam-dunk certainty for the CPS to convict at least half of the parties to that crime.
When laws as simple as that in the teen-space are entirely disregarded, then any attempts at laws around mere comms activity will be utterly futile.
It will be really tricky even to define “mobile phone” so as to catch whatever functionality they want to ban. Is a particular device a “mobile phone” or a small “tablet computer”? If they pick on the actual phone function, that app could be removed and the kids will hardly notice. Or take out the 4G/5G connectivity and they will simply hang about where there is available wifi, etc. Alternatively if they ban anything capable of, say, wireless communication over any channel, homework will immediately grind to a halt …
Stonyground, hassle teenagers? I don’t think so. Dwarfs under 8 and 70 year old ladies with one leg, maybe. But nothing as risky as hassling someone nearly 16…
OT but you may be pleased to know that conscription and other forms of state sponsored slavery have raised their ugly heads again.
Conscription/National Service ain’t going to happen, it’s just a desperate line thrown out towards the hang-em/flog-em pensioners in a futile attempt to regain their votes.
Not worked out that most who are pensioners now didn’t do National Service so have no urge to impose that remembered rite-of-passage penalty on the modern young.
I must admit when I saw that on this morning’s Newsfeed I think I groaned audibly. The notion that the million or so eligible Hamas supporters will go willingly along to join up even if coerced is just risible…
Actually, young people between 5 and 17 years old can legally drink alcohol at home or in other private premises in the UK except Northern Island.
It’s the act of buying alcohol for underage drinkers that is the offence I was referring to, which, strictly speaking is what happened.