UK's largest mobile network tells parents: don't give under-11s smartphones (opens in new tab)

(bbc.co.uk)

14 pointsbsdz1y ago13 comments

13 comments

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

bsdzOP1y 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

Doxin1y ago

Personally, as someone who moderated a large forum for a couple years, I'd personally put the cutoff at at least 14. 13 year olds are by far the most annoying demographic I had to deal with. 12 year olds would generally behave, as would 14 year olds. 13 is somehow a magic age where a lot of the online annoyances source from.

squigz1y ago

Putting aside the privacy issues of requiring identification... what does 'social media' mean exactly? Safe to assume Facebook and Instagram are included. Probably YouTube? What about Hacker News? Discord? Online games?

There's always a lot of discussion about how bad and scary "social media" is, but I've never really gotten a clear definition of what that actually is.

3 more replies

sorokod1y ago

Thanks for the link, major west European countries are in the [14,16] range.

UK has 13 as a threshold by default. This is a Google policy, but BT implying that smartphones for 12 year-olds is ok sounds self serving.

akomtu1y 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.

underlogic1y 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"

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse