Wrong questions about children online persist, from pediatricians to Parliaments

What links a pediatrician's digital advice for parents to suboptimal reactions to bad EU law proposals to "protect children"?

Dr. Farnetani, a famous italian pediatrician, just said "No to age limits for smartphones and social media" (italian) when interviewed about a petition by other Italian experts, who asked the government to ban smartphones before 14 years old, and social media before 16. These are his main points and suggestions:

1. such tools are harmful if taken in excessive doses, for long periods

2. what is necessary is to teach children a responsible, conscious usage of said tools

3. because those tools are now part of everybody's lifestyle, with undeniable advantages

4. being with peers is always positive as long as virtual meetings aren't THE exclusive way to be together

5. rather than imposing generic bans, it is important that parents create alternative opportunities for socialization

6. rather than hiding the problem it's better to have a daily, continuous conversation also about these things

7. sleep must be protected, because using electronic devices right before sleeping, or worst: in bed, makes falling asleep harder

8. teach smartphones and social media, because learning how to use such crucial tools can't be left to self-improvement. Such teaching must start and happen in the family, but also in schools and by NGOs, via properly trained teachers

Sure. If...

Dr. Farnetani surely is a very competent pediatrician. Still, I argue that, in the real world, his intrinsically good recommendations are hardly applicable, and partly misleading, at least as reported in that interview. The world would be wonderful if everybody could follow Dr. Farnetani's advice. Seriously. Besides, should age limits be enforced, the only ones who could do that without serious collateral damage and huge waste of money would be parents, NEVER governments, like that petition says. Still, there are many things that fall short in that interview.

Magical spells, i.e. the ONLY age limit on social media that could work in REAL life without BIG collateral damage.

First, there is no explicit declaration of how soon is certainly too soon, which is sorely needed, and never repeated enough. Tell the average family of 2024 that "children do not need smartphones bans", and way too many parents will just hear "it's OK to keep giving personal smartphones to kids as young as seven/eight years old", which I would bet is not what Dr. Farnetani meant.

Second, it is wrong to equate smartphones with social media or messaging systems like WhatsApp or Telegram. Really wrong. From a certain point of view, it doesn't even matter whether "social media" is good or bad.

The real problem, however, is that most suggestions of the list above are basically impossible to follow for the overwhelming majority of today's real families wealthy enough to have kids that could be harmed by smartphones and social media. It's as simple as that.

That is, how many real parents of today have, on top of all their other responsibilities, BOTH the knowledge AND the time to have "daily, continuous conversations" for teaching "responsible, conscious use" of something that, unlike cooking, bicycling or even dating, that they themselves don't really understand (more on this below)? How many parents have concrete possibilities to "create alternative opportunities for socialization" for their own children... before those children grow up? Ditto for real schools, in case you were thinking it should be their responsibility.

Seriously, why didn’t the journalist ask Dr. Farnetani how many parents of 2024 have the time, and skills, and opportunities to be like Henry Oliver? One in a thousand? One in five hundred? Surely too few to make a difference. Or, put in another way, Dr. Farnetani's advice, while being indeed very good, does not scale at all. Not enough to make a difference in society, for the next 15/20 years at least.

We must certainly strive for a world in which all parents have those possibilities, but that is another discussion. In the real world of today, and as long as certain things stay the same, the only smartphone and social media strategy that will work without negative effects on the overwhelming majority of real kids with real parents is exactly the only one that almost every real parent could afford and will be able to follow: "no smartphone before ~14 years old, period". And if you didn't notice right away that I did NOT say "no internet", do read that piece twice, and then this.

If you need proof that way too few adults of today don't understand enough the actual nature and deep impacts of digital networks and services, just check the "Ruby Goldberg" part of this post, look at NFTs, or remember the credit still given to dumb ideas like online voting.

I am not saying this to accuse, insult or shame anybody! I am simply pointing out the fact that smartphones, social media and other digital tech that even much science fiction of the 20th century didn't imagine pretty much crashed on us just 20 years ago, changing every quarter since then.

I am just saying that all this stuff is so new, so big and so fast, for a species that needed 150 thousand years to "invent" agriculture and 6/7 thousand years more to invent writing, that almost nobody has had the time to really understand it, no matter how smart they may be. There is no shame at all in taking it slow, or just refusing (not being forced!) to use certain services until they make sense. Quite the contrary, actually, especially when children are concerned. It's just basic common sense.

The sooner we accept we’re ALL as ready as these guys to handle certain things, the happier our children will be. (source: screenshot of image search for “cavemen with smartphones”

Furthermore, speaking of social media, the interview doesn't mention at all that datafication, censorship, surveillance and misguided or missing regulations make current social media so bad that even adults should use them as little as possible, and children even less, regardless of any mental health concerns.

Then again, omissions of the complete picture are very common in many, similarly well intentioned proposals to limit certain abuses. For example, last May the European Parliament voted on a law proposal nicknamed "Chat Control", whose intended purpose is to fight child sexual abuse, collateral damage be damned. Under Chat Control (source), "users of apps and services with chat functions [would] be asked whether they accept the indiscriminate and error-prone scanning and possibly reporting of their privately shared images, photos and videos" and those who refused such scanning "would be blocked from sending or receiving images, photos, videos and links". It goes without saying that refusing would automatically make of whoever chose to do a potential target of many other forms of surveillance or discrimination.

Surprisingly, many NGOs and politicians, including this member of the European Parliament, asked to reject the proposal period, which is what eventually happened. But I dream that it would be much better, should that or any similar proposal return, if everybody first approved it, and then every citizen refused to submit to the automatic scanning.

I dream this first of all because if everybody (starting with parents) did so it would be an excellent proof, and a powerful political signal, that it is a stupid, very dangerous law.

But I dream this even more because losing the ability to share as we do today pictures and notifications of every meal, party, relative, holiday, home improvement... and to receive the same "news" from every "friend" would be a feature, not a bug. Heck, it would be a return to circa 2005, not the Bronze Age, because Chat Control would not touch forums, blogging, email, IRC or those ugly, so personal phone calls (1). Can you imagine a better remedy for the endless stream of "me, me, ME!" flood everyone is pushed to both practice and endure these days?

Of course, this would NOT solve all our problems, including the root, pre-digital issues that (starting from this one) make life suck so much to make people escape inside Instagram or TikTok. The point of this post is just that as long as journalists or members of Parliaments only ask wrong or incomplete questions, the answers don't really matter, no matter how well intentioned and competent the other party is.

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1. Yes, of course the same parties who long for Chat Control would target those other media, sooner of later, and of course we should fight those proposals too. One problem at a time.