| I think the survivorship bias is strong in this thread. This is a normal flow though when we consider where we are. Because of this, my suggestion is not to let the opinions of people online (whoever well-read and educated they might be) to act as a guide on defining a smartphone policy that suits you and your children. I also would advise that what I see here are a lot of straw man arguments - "discovered porn online? we had magazines and we turned out fine thus porn is fine". This is also a great example of where the two meet and create a very dangerous and incorrect (in my opinion) argument. The porn someone used to watch in a magazine would be limited to just that - a magazine. Static content that wouldn't change, that wouldn't gather information about you and at the end, you would be stuck with it for the foreseeable future until you would get your hands on another magazine. Online porn on the other hand watches what you watch, it creates recommendations and reinforces whatever behaviours you show to it in order to keep you engaged. It also has the nasty superpower of being there all the time, at any hour in any day and creating a self reinforcing cesspool that cannot and is not good for your development [1]. We're very quick to brush off that children just watch a few videos online and that those videos seem to only yield positive things, but the simple act of being always connected has negative downsides that have been studied. I feel like we're dealing with climate change discussions where we're still doing studies to figure out if it's really there. It is. It's really there. And so is the damage this always online society is doing to children, from their sleep [2], to their learning abilities and retention [3] as well as damage to self and body image [4]. These were all found in a quick search but the literature on this discussion in particular, the effects of technology and screens on younger people speaks for itself. It is damaging and just because we have 50-100 people who were fine, doesn't mean that the rest will be. They might be! Nothing might happen but that does not mean that the result is guaranteed and we should be so cavalier about dismissing any possible negative discussion around the topic. It's also crucial to remember that in the end you cannot control what kids do. You can't. Just think of all the things you hid from your parents successfully. Now imagine that the thing they need to hide is just a browser tab. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/08/sexual...
[2] - https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... (there are other studies on this, this is just a review of existing studies)
[3] - https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/pen-and-paper-beat...
[4] - https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/02/social-media... |