The kids with phones are alright(heatherburns.tech)
233 points by JumpCrisscross 4 days ago | 304 comments
tl;dr: A viral Scotrail video showing passengers confronting a drunk council legal officer for covertly filming teenage girls is used to argue that UK tech policy has it backwards: instead of restricting young people's phone use, we should recognize phones as essential safety and agency tools. The author contends that authoritarian internet regulations like under-16 social media bans are being driven by an out-of-touch upper-class elite who culturally view children as possessions, imposing their values on working-class youth who actually need phones and real-world resilience skills.
HN Discussion:
  • Social media platforms and their attention economy are the real problem, not phones themselves
  • Panic about kids and phones is recurring nonsense; kids are fine
  • Article offers no solutions to real documented harms of social media on kids
  • Children by definition lack full agency, so restricting them is appropriate like with smoking
  • Article's class-based framing and outrage-driven premise are unserious or absurd