Why We Have Banned Social Media for Our Child
As debates swirl in legislatures around the world about restricting children's social media use, senior editor Jonathan Church offers his own experience raising a daughter while limiting screens.
In December of last year, Australia became the first nation in the world to ban social media for children under the age of sixteen, and, in the time since, numerous other countries are considering doing the same. (Around the same time that the Australian policy went into effect, Florida was permitted by an appeals court to begin enforcing its ban on children under the age of fourteen from having social media accounts.) Reactions to these proposals have varied widely, inviting questions about the perennial tension between liberty and safety, the disconnect between private sector incentive structures and the well-being of young people, and several other trade-offs.
The debate over government-ordained bans obscures, at times, a simpler truth: Parents already possess the authority—and the responsibility—to impose limits on technology regardless of what happens in legislative chambers. As confirmed by many research findings, young people are better served to have technology in very limited doses.
Almost from the day my daughter was born, her mother and I agreed that we would minimize our daughter’s exposure to screen time, with a near-total blackout for the first two years. For us, “screen time” was an inclusive term. It meant no phones, iPads, or television screens. But we are not fundamentalists, either. We decided there was nothing wrong with allowing her to watch Disney or Sesame Street on occasion because, well, kids are kids.
Timeless reading in a fleeting world.
