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UK's largest mobile network tells parents: don't give under-11s smartphones

14 points| bsdz | 1 year ago |bbc.co.uk

13 comments

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Aldipower|1 year ago

Looks like a trick, because it is not even better to give 12s or even 14s a smartphone.

bsdz|1 year ago

It certainly feels like social media interactions should be restricted to older children. 13yo seems to be a common cutoff for administering one's own online accounts with various exceptions for many countries [1]. Perhaps social media should be restricted to those entering their penultimate year of Secondary / High school and be accompanied with some form of tuition / certification? (Along the lines of social media hygiene, online safety, local Internet law, reporting etc)

[1] https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1350409

akomtu|1 year ago

Ads dealers, who own social networks, are adept manipulators: they find your weaknesses and torture you psychologically until they break your will and make you a mindless ads user. Then those sorry doomscrollers aimlessly wander along the streets, and unable to resist the urge, use whatever ads they find on those streets. Most of the ads dealers are no better, and the ads they sell are mostly poison.

underlogic|1 year ago

"Under-11s we feel should not be given access to smartphones. They don't need the usage of a smartphone and, actually, a feature phone - or a dumb phone, as some people call them - is more suitable."

Who are these nobodies lecturing us how to parent? I could care less how they feel and there's a clear conflict of interest. It's a bad precedent when some policy maker crawls from under the rug to explain what is "suitable"