Europe: Ban it all. No Phones or Social Media For the Kids.
Shut it down. Ban it all.
My 9 year old is in third grade. Here in Germany that means we have to start thinking about secondary schools. At this moment my singular criteria is a school that bans phones.
I say shut it down! Ban it all!
I think GenZ really got f*cked both with phones and then Covid. I don't want my Gen Alpha to suffer the same fate.
Some would say this is for the parents to manage. I say this is ridiculous. It's like saying it's a parents responsiblity to keep their kid away from crack, when crack is ubiquitous.
And unlike with crack (or cigarettes, alcohol, or any other addictive substance) with social media there's a network effect to deal with. If other kids have phones and social media and your kid doesn't, your kid becomes a social outcast. It's insidious. I'm a hardliner.
Ursula von der Leyen:
“Our European age verification app is technically ready” and will “soon” be “available for citizens to use,” the European Commission president said at a press conference.
Critics say that any effort to verify age will undermine online anonymity and risks hurting the right of children to have access to information.
What a weak argument. First of all, I'm becoming more and more opposed to online anonymity (but that's another post). And loss of online information access is well worth the cost of not having their young still developing brains fried.
Read the full article at POLITICO →
