"They continue to permit the Tories some semblance of ‘credibility’ on the economy, repeating credulously the utterly ludicrous suggestion that Badenoch will cut stamp duty (£11 billion) whilst finding £47bn through Civil Service cuts and welfare changes - this from the opposition party which campaigned aggressively to prevent Starmer from cutting the Brownite winter fuel allowance.”
Yep, 100%. I spoke to a couple of Reform insiders the other day and they said that there’s been a sort of collective “oh shit” from the Tory press. Farage and Zia are essentially persona on Grata (two odd articles each compared to 30 by Tories) at the Telegraph and it has swung back to being pro Tory - Nigel needs to hold firm until the locals.
'No social media before 16' is one of the 'Four Norms' suggested by Jonathan Haidt in 'The Anxious Generation'. I share your worries about implementation and politicians' ulterior motives, but do you not think there is good sense in Haidt's analysis?
It should be the responsibilities of parents as to whether their children have access to social media and no one else's. If parents are not behaving in a responsible manner and are not educating their children as to the potential dangers of internet usage, the blame lies with them and them alone. No one should have to sacrifice their freedom due to parents neglecting their duty to their children.
The issue I find with treating it as a family issue is that the pulls toward pathological social media use arise from network effects that, once they exceed a certain size, become very difficult for a single family's choices to change or mitigate vs. a population acting in unison. If taking your kid off social media ends up isolating them from their peers leaving them even worse off then do you really have the freedom to shield them from its effects? A universal rule avoids this issue but then how do you enforce it without overstepping? Age verification for social media has obvious problems for internet anonymity, dumbphones only for u16s would seem to avoid that issue as it only requires age verification to be carried out in the real world, something we already do without much complaint. I'd be interested to hear a better idea.
"They continue to permit the Tories some semblance of ‘credibility’ on the economy, repeating credulously the utterly ludicrous suggestion that Badenoch will cut stamp duty (£11 billion) whilst finding £47bn through Civil Service cuts and welfare changes - this from the opposition party which campaigned aggressively to prevent Starmer from cutting the Brownite winter fuel allowance.”
Yep, 100%. I spoke to a couple of Reform insiders the other day and they said that there’s been a sort of collective “oh shit” from the Tory press. Farage and Zia are essentially persona on Grata (two odd articles each compared to 30 by Tories) at the Telegraph and it has swung back to being pro Tory - Nigel needs to hold firm until the locals.
'No social media before 16' is one of the 'Four Norms' suggested by Jonathan Haidt in 'The Anxious Generation'. I share your worries about implementation and politicians' ulterior motives, but do you not think there is good sense in Haidt's analysis?
It should be the responsibilities of parents as to whether their children have access to social media and no one else's. If parents are not behaving in a responsible manner and are not educating their children as to the potential dangers of internet usage, the blame lies with them and them alone. No one should have to sacrifice their freedom due to parents neglecting their duty to their children.
The issue I find with treating it as a family issue is that the pulls toward pathological social media use arise from network effects that, once they exceed a certain size, become very difficult for a single family's choices to change or mitigate vs. a population acting in unison. If taking your kid off social media ends up isolating them from their peers leaving them even worse off then do you really have the freedom to shield them from its effects? A universal rule avoids this issue but then how do you enforce it without overstepping? Age verification for social media has obvious problems for internet anonymity, dumbphones only for u16s would seem to avoid that issue as it only requires age verification to be carried out in the real world, something we already do without much complaint. I'd be interested to hear a better idea.