Ultimately this is the solution to many things, but the kick back to such programs and topics is unbelievable. Guess where that kick back appears a lot of the time.
Plus we are continually loading schools up with stuff. At some point something else suffers. Maybe we’re at that point already?
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14 year old kids having consensual sex with each other is illegal (banned), how’s that working out?
Making the main emphasis by way of banning the end user is lazy and nothing more than a token gesture.
I’m not opposed to the banning, it’s just not the answer
Of course. But I think you are mistaking the point of a ban.
The point of a ban is not to stop 100% of teenagers stop smoking or drinking. It’s to but a barrier there to make it harder.
We all illicitly drank and smoked before we were 18, but what would we have been like if at 14 we’d have been able to freely walk into a shop and buy two litres of diamond white?
In relation to Social Media, and as a parent, as I try and keep my kids away from a technology that is demonstrably harming them, it can’t be overstated how helpful it is to be able to say that it is also illegal.
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We’d have to be able to show what society would be like if we just let 14 year olds fuck each other.
A lot of 14 year olds will have sex regardless of the age of consent, but I imagine the concept of an age of consent is incredibly helpful for teenagers who don’t want to have sex and might otherwise be pressured into doing so.
I don’t think it’s claiming to be ‘The Answer’ but it is surely part of the response.
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As part of that response, my eldest is in Y2 and they have had two sessions this year on online safety.
Would love to know what year such people started going into schools.
I was 20 when I got my first phone…
Body wasn’t black, but…
It was brown.
In any case, I am so fecking glad I didn’t have to deal with SM in my teens, and I feel the most sorry for those whose teenage kids had this foisted upon them from about 2010 onwards with essentially no thought as to the consequences.
Harmful drugs don’t just come bottles labelled thalidomide. There was outrage back then, rightly so, and there is rightly, imo, a building recognition of the dangers SM presents in the here and now.
The most convincing argument from my point of view is that if you do indeed wait for the perfect solution and don’t take the first step, you probably never will.
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The ban, regardless of how ineffective it’s likely to be, can only be considered a good move in the right direction.
My concern (if I had young kids) would be that there will be a pretty lame acceptance that this is all that can be done.
And it’s likely that the acceptance doesn’t manifest into demands for more stringent measures is because huge numbers of full grown adults are addicted to the very same outlets.
The other day, I saw a 40-years old with his two teen-age girls. We were sitting at an orchestra rehearsal, and I was sat behind them, so I had (involuntarily) a good view on what he was doing on his phone: going from a Candy Crush - like game towards diverse social media platforms, and back again. It lasted throughout the rehearsal. Meanwhile, one of his daughters was listening to the rehearsal, and the other one was reading a book. 
So yeah, it’s easy to put everything on the teenagers. Seeing at how fully grown-ups are equally addicted to these products, I’d say that it is indeed the better idea to bin them, or at least, to drastically regulate them. It must go far beyond a simple interdiction for teen-agers imo, even though it could be the first step among more drastic ones to follow.
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Just a thought that with a ban in place, would it put an industry on SM providers to ensure that their platforms are not accessible to U16’s. That could be legally enforceable which no bad thing in my mind.
Does it also make access by predators more difficult? Again, another legal protection that can be enforced.
I’m just thinking that it may offer routes to prosecute platforms or people that willingly allow kids into areas of the tinternet they really shouldn’t be visiting.
The more countries that ban SM for under 16s the more likely the SM companies might think to get their act together and police the hate / lies they spew. They probably won’t, but we can hope.
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Threaten them with total shutdown, they’ll “get their act together” within a week.
The hate and lies are the product at this point.
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https://x.com/_MartinKelly_/status/2066891028099907964
Seems it is pretty much confirmed now.
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Doesn’t seem as serious as some claimed initially though. If Sky is correct, this is not a very big deal.
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Anyone who logged onto a UK news site today would no doubt be horrified by the details of the murder of Preston Davey. Reading the story made me think of this excellent article from a couple of weeks ago.
You could probably argue that the details of today’s news are more ghastly than any of them, but I don’t believe in a hierarchy of suffering…there is something very wrong with us, and it makes me sick to my stomach.
In any case, I look forward to another call to arms from our future PM.
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Moved to the UK in 2015…
Politics here is never fucking dull, is it?
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Would we complain it it was?
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So it was you! You’re a fucking curse! 
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did you catch Paulines address at the press club…
hey, by the way, are you streaming cup fever?
no sam this time but ed and santo are building nicely…
SBS on demand
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