The kids with phones are alright(heatherburns.tech)
264 points by JumpCrisscross 61 days ago | 379 comments
tl;dr: A viral Scotrail video showing passengers confronting a drunk council legal officer secretly filming teenage girls is used to argue that UK tech policy has it backwards: instead of restricting perpetrators, laws increasingly punish young people by curtailing their phone use. The author contends that smartphone bans and age-verification regimes reflect the values of a detached upper-class elite who infantilize their own children, and that working-class teens actually need phones—and the agency to use them—for real-world safety and developing adult resilience.
HN Discussion:
  • Article ignores real harms of social media on kids and offers no alternatives
  • The real problem is social media's attention economy, not kids having phones
  • Children by definition lack full agency, undermining the article's framing
  • Article strawmans actual UK policy proposals which are more reasonable than portrayed
  • Generational doom rhetoric about teens is perennially overblown