Something's missing from the smartphone conversation
Children's rights has entered the chat
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Should children be allowed smartphones?
If so, at what age should they be allowed them?
Should teens be allowed to access social media?
Should schools ban smartphones?
Should parents club together to stand against tech companies?
Should the government slap age restrictions on smartphones?
Are smartphones and social media the worst thing ever to happen to children?
Maybe it’s just my own algorithm, but it seems like wherever I look at the moment I’m being served another think-piece or Instagram post exploring these questions. Many of these are either agreeing or pushing back on Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, wondering whether to join a Smartphone Free Childhood group, or musing on the current flurry of news stories about banning phones in schools or limiting social media for under-16s.
This newsletter is not a review Haidt’s work; there are already lots you can read online, including this piece I enjoyed by Kathryn Jezer-Morton. Nor am I going to tell you what to do when it comes to giving your own child a smartphone or social media access.
Rather, I want to offer you a set of questions. These don’t come with neat and easy answers, but they do help bring some nuance to an incredibly heated - and increasingly polarised - debate. And importantly, they act as a reminder that these conversations are happening within a context of adultism where children have less power than adults, in places where children’s rights are too often used as a rhetorical tool rather than as a set of minimum standards to ensure children have what they need to thrive.
Most of these questions are not specific to the topic of smartphones; they are helpful questions to consider when consuming anything you encounter about children, be it a newspaper article, documentary, radio programme, research paper, newsletter, social media post, or book.
15 questions to ask when reading about children and smartphones
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