I see that MPs have voted against banning Under 16s from using social media. All I can say to that is quite right, too. There are numerous very serious issues with the internet but attempting to stop all children using social media is not just wrong, it’s unenforceable.
I am of course right on board when it comes to taking steps to ensure that children are prevented from seeing certain content on-line, that certain content including things like pornography and extreme violence. Only a profiteering violent pornographer would suggest otherwise. I would sooner bring in stronger regulation and age-limited access to sites.
You will never succeed in ensuring that no child will ever see something they really never should. In my day, says this doddery old pensioner, a cheap and nasty, and I am afraid to say badly stained, porn magazine would do the rounds at senior school. If such a magazine was found by either a parent or a teacher, it would be confiscated because porn was banned. It didn’t stop teenage boys looking at it. A ban didn’t exactly work, did it? As with cheap and nasty porn mags, just make the bad stuff on the internet harder to access and make sure there are major deterrents and penalties out there for those who would pollute our children’s minds.
Having said that, I am far more concerned about adults accessing what might be deemed ‘inappropriate content’ than there are children. Whenever I visit a supermarket, I observe elderly folk purchasing hateful content by way of national newspapers like the Mail, Express, Sun, Telegraph and Times. When people express concern about the effects of the internet on the young, how about the effects on the old(er)?
It is a matter of fact that only old people buy newspapers. Voting patterns suggest they follow what their favourite gutter press titles tell them to follow. Your average Reform UK Ltd supporter is likely to be over 50 and more likely still to be over 60 and yet it is concerning that many of them glean their views from what they see in the newspapers they buy and read. It seems to me that they are every bit as likely to be taken in by the extremities in life as the young are. I’d argue even more so.
So perhaps we should regulate the so-called mainstream media, too, inviting Mail readers to undergo cognitive and IQ tests? I’m joking, of course, but I am trying to draw attention from the folly of the wholesale banning of social media access for young folk. It’s wrong but anyway it would never work.
The internet is a thing of great beauty, if used correctly, and that should be our starting point. Banning evil content should be a given, as should strong regulation. Banning children from using aspects of the WWW is a sledgehammer and nut solution. And if Kemi Badenoch and the last dregs of the Conservative party say a ban is a good thing, then you know for sure it isn’t.
