OPINION - I’d rather a mother blow smoke at her child than give them a phone
Picture the scene. A crowded stopping train on the way to Wales, one of the ones with way too few seats for passengers. At one table, there’s a woman with four children, one of them bawling his little lungs out. Finally the mother cracks and hands the little fellow what he was after: her smartphone. Peace descends on the carriage. The other passengers feel a sensation of relief.
And that, folks, is precisely why the Government’s latest initiative — a consultation about the possibility — is such a waste of time. Because by the age of 16, the damage has been done. The child has already been groomed by a technology which locks them into a world divorced from the actual world around him. The issue of parental consent is just annoyingly redundant, because in most cases (as with the harassed mother mentioned above) the problem is the parents.
