More than 10 years ago, I filmed my kids for a report on the impact of screens on young minds.
My eldest daughter was six at the time, her twin sisters nearly three. They didn’t have their own devices – Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube were beyond their imagination.
TikTok hadn’t even been invented.
Yet now as teenagers their lives, like pretty much every other child we know, are dominated by social media. Snapchat is central to their social lives and TikTok is a go-to dopamine fix.
… but now he says their lives are dominated by social media
As parents we try our best to pry the devices out of their hands and limit their screen time. No surprise the idea of a government-mandated ban is popular with parents, less so with kids.
“We’ve been born into a world with social media so it’s a bit unfair if you just take it away from people who are younger,” said one of my 13-year-olds. Especially, she adds, “when they’re influenced by adults who are also on their phones.”
Fair point. But we’ve just about had enough of arguing with them about it.
Now it looks like we’ve reached a point where the majority of people are starting to think the same.
France and Spain are promising laws to ban child access to social media as early as this year.
Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy and Slovenia have proposed similar legislation.
Read more:
The challenges I face keeping my kids safe in the new Wild West
Do you know what your kids see online?
Instagram and YouTube ‘engineer addiction’
Portugal is considering parental consent for child social media access. Last month the Westminster government said it would consult on the issue of social media for the under-16s.
As a bloc, the EU has said it supports a Europe-wide…
