Protecting children

It is certainly true that young children need some state protection from fraud artists, perverts and other abusers on the Internet.
But moves by governments in North America to stop under-16 teens from using social media - and cellphones in class – are rather like shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted.
These well-meaning initiatives may make adults feel good, but they do little if anything to tackle the overall problem … which is ignorance in one form or another. And they could well make matters worse.
For one thing, many young teens know far more about the Internet than their parents ever did or will. And most will find any number of workarounds to access supposedly inaccessible material.
For another, young people’s natural curiosity for what’s going on around them should be satisfied through education and enlightenment, not forced childishness. Already, they are bombarded with enough propaganda from governments, corporations and “activist” groups to fill a barrel-load of bafflegab.
A much better solution, in my view, would be for more parents to accept the responsibility of monitoring their kids’ information sources -- and for more teachers to fully embrace the use of both social and mainstream media in their classes.
Our children’s greatest protection in life will come through self-protection. And they’ll boost that through critical thinking and “cognitive resilience”, not via unenforceable technological bans and runaway censorship.
As has often been said, the best way to fight bad information is simply with better information.