China was way ahead in seeing the danger.
Its cyber space regulator announced last year that children under 18 should be limited to a maximum of two hours a day on smart devices. Makers must limit use through “minor modes” similar to those which followed curfews for the country’s teenage video gamers in 2021. Chinese teenagers can’t watch Douyin, ByteDance’s Chinese version of TikTok, for more than 40 minutes per day. The western TikTok, meanwhile, has introduced a one-hour daily time limit default for teens but this is cosmetic: it can simply be turned off.
The fact that China has been far more effective in protecting its children from the excesses of technology should make western legislators think. Discussions in Washington centre on whether TikTok’s ownership makes it a threat to national security. But hyperactive apps and addictive algorithms are already a threat because they diminish children’s mental stability and their ability to learn. In 2022, a third of American teens said they were using at least one of YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook “almost constantly”. We are hardly going to win the battle with China over artificial intelligence, or anything else, if we raise a generation of zombies.
Where China is going for the manufacturers, Europe is focusing on the classroom. France, Italy and Netherlands have banned smartphone use in schools; England this year gave teachers the power to search bags and confiscate devices.
But how do we handle home and holidays? Here, we parents have to look very hard at ourselves.
.Here are the top political news stories for today.
Profound ignorance of child psychological development is widespread among both the general public and doctors. The human mind has an innate ability to induct the grammatical structure of language which is why a child born in Germany comes to speak German and a child born in France comes to speak French. Similarly, if first read to and then with by their parent(s) as a toddler, almost all children will induct the nature of reading and be able to read simple books by kindergarten. Unfortunately, this parenting practice is widely ignored. Another essential parenting guideline is, apart from a… Read more
@VultureDavePatriot2yrs2Y
Screen time is not just a kid problem, it's not a parent problem or even a spouse problem. It’s a family problem.
@ZealousL1bertyNo Labels2yrs2Y
One salient thing in my view is that the proliferation of smartphones and the explosion of online content seem to have precipitated a decline not only of non-digital social interactions but also in the quality and number of public venues where people can meet.
Not long ago it used to be a thing to make friends even as adults at the pub, on holiday, or at leisure spots. I don’t see such interactions these days.
@PolicyPloverGreen2yrs2Y
As a father of teens and younger, I would happily see a legal minimum age of 16 to have an account on a social media platform, enforced with mandatory ID verification and traceable accounts.
@WaspDannyRepublican2yrs2Y
Ask any teacher about smartphones and they will tell you they are a hazard to health, learning, emotions and memory. Real experiences - and school,- become an interruption to online unreality.
@AbaloneWillowDemocrat2yrs2Y
An interesting book on this is the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. Smartphones are only part of the problem. Overparenting and refusing to allow children to explore the world and make their own mistakes and learn from them also significantly contributes to this. In days gone by a child would have been chucked out of the house and told to go play until tea time. Nowadays, parents never let their kids out of their site and mollycoddle them so that they never experience or learn from anything. When they eventually enter the real world they are overwhelmed.
This should not be government enforced. So ridiculous to even act like that. We gonna put facial recognition on Tiktok logins? There is no feasible way for the government to enforce this so it will be some authoritative abomination
@ISIDEWITH2yrs2Y
@ISIDEWITH2yrs2Y
@ISIDEWITH2yrs2Y
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