Published on 12, July, 2020
Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/24/the-anxious-generation-jonathan-haidt-book-extract-instagram-tiktok-smartphones-social-media-screens?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-gb
Very interesting, I think.
I was curious to find out - OK- what appropriate advice might be available to young people to enable them to gain the benefits from online activities plus for them to understand how to avoid online harms?
I came across this (aimed at 11-18 year olds). I liked the section explaining about setting up Privacy Settings (with practical reminders such as to test your settings with a trusted friend looking at your profile before you start using a Social Media account):
www.childnet.com/.../11-18-year-olds
I will always question the fact as long as I live that when mobile phones and the internet was first brought in during the 1980’s, given all we have learned during Covid, aside from the costs involved, why was there no limits placed on who has access to such devices via a licence system based on need that can be proved in a court of law, something that I have always strongly advocated and why have in recent times, a situation has been created in our times that people have become totally dependent on such devices because so many public and private companies have moved their entire operations online, in effect forcing people to be online - for me, this will always be a moral and ethical issue - it was always a totally stupid and misguided idea to merge mobile phone technology with the internet and to move away from dialup internet to create wifi and broadband - we now know that the globalist deep state wants to shut down the existing internet and mobile phone setup and replace it with 5G and 6G that they can totally control and then the censorship only came in later on - Facebook and Twitter were known to be involved with the CIA and FBI to gather information from around the world including and after 9/11 - only our grandparents generation before they passed when I was growing up in Ireland tried to stop computers/internet getting into secondary schools and mobile phones getting into the hands of children with the help of Catholic Parish Priests and the Police in many parts of Rural Ireland and with and for very good reason, aside from council officials trying to stop council tenants getting landline phones and mobile phones, not on the basis of costs, but because they feared something far worse, which has come to pass in our times and those fears have been proven correct and accurate - we have all seen how tech is abused and misused all the time, by those who should not have access to it in the first place - all the safety precautions can never protect innocent children from the far greater dangers that are out there in the space of 40 years, where in my teens I once embraced “progress” and leftism, as well as “advances” in science and tech, but in that time, I’ve come to realise how dangerous all of this is if not carefully managed and tightly controlled - I will never back down from the position that children under 21 must always be kept well away from mobile phones and the internet for all reasons and there is no reason why they “need” access to these devices
Yeh these phones are a hindrance at times. You make a good point. I never had a phone as a child and life was more fun.
I am glad that you had no children.