Are Worries About Kids and Smartphones Just a New Moral Panic?
Short answer: No. But we do need to be careful about how we regulate online content.
Over the past week or so, there has been a prolonged meltdown on Twitter over kids and smartphones. On the one side are people who say that giving kids smartphones is generally bad and that smartphones should be banned in school (this is where I fall). On the other are people who think concerns about kids and phones is a big moral panic, that there’s no evidence that smartphones cause real harm, and that supposed concern about children is being used as a pretext to censor the internet (some in this group also seem to believe that barring children’s access to smartphones is fundamental oppressive to children and possibly abusive, a view that is equal parts entertaining and bananas).
I do not think that concern about kids and smartphones is a big moral panic. In fact, as AI continues its rapid takeover of our lives, I don’t think we’ve panicked nearly enough.
However. There is absolutely truth to the argument that “what about the children?!” is routinely used for far more censorious purposes than originally intended. I don’t think that means that we need the internet to be a free-for-all — there is already censorship and content moderation, otherwise all you’d see is porn everywhere. But when these laws are written so expansively that they pull in vaguely-defined “harmful content,” they open the door to abuse. The answer, in my view, isn’t no regulation at all, but it is regulation that is clear, narrowly-written, and with specific aims.
