Why won’t phone companies stop kids using social media?

When it comes to social media, parents find it difficult enough to keep up with their offspring’s online world. What hope, then, do governments and regulators have of keeping up with digital technology?

This week, Ofcom has announced a new code of practice which aims to use powers granted under the Online Safety Act in order to ‘tame aggressive algorithms’. Such a move seems well-meaning, but official bodies will always be several steps behind the latest online trends. The onerous-sounding new rules will probably end up restricting the online freedom of less savvy adults more than of children. 

That’s not to say the phone-based childhood is not a significant social concern. WhatsApp, SnapChat, Instagram are new worlds which parents are ill equipped to help their children navigate. Recent research from Ofcom showed that a quarter of British children have a smartphone at the age of seven.