I seem to have struck lucky with a child who didn't want a mobile phone, but he was one of only two or three children a year of 200 at school that didn't have one. I can see that it's hard to deny your child something that every other child has and phones are useful when your child starts becoming more independent. I certainly wouldn't do a long journey without my phone myself. We obviously managed without phones as children, but if your child is going to school on public transport, I totally understand wanting them to have a phone in case of problems.

The apps and websites often have good (or relatively harmless!) parts to them e.g YouTube has tons of brilliant educational videos. There is no easy way as a parent to give them access to the good parts without access to the more harmful parts. You don't want to be a total killjoy and never let them play a computer game (plus playing games with them is fun!). Schools require internet usage for homework. You end up in lots of awkward grey areas. Is watching a video about building logic gates in Minecraft ok? If so, then what about Minecraft videos generally? You can't pre-vet everything they want to watch and then supervise them closely to make sure they don't stray from that.

It feels different from smoking/alcohol because there are so many grey areas and there isn't quite as clear evidence as to what exactly is harmful. Ideally you try and prevent your children smoking and drinking alcohol with education and setting a good example rather your wrath. That's trickier with social media.

I think the current proposals are non-ideal but a bit of a desperation measure because nobody has come up with anything better.

Most apps and sites are terrible in terms of the parental controls they provide - they tend to be all or nothing. E.g. I'd like to have a group for our family on WhatsApp but I don't want my children to be able to join random WhatsApp groups and there isn't any way to have the former and not the latter.

There is also a cost socially, which is hard to navigate as a parent. If everybody is talking about minecraft every break and playing it together in the evenings, then it's hard for them if they haven't even seen the game.

For example, my sister is a translator and she says that checking AI translations is actually harder in many ways than doing a translation in the first place, but the agencies pay less for checking than actual translation.

When they were young, you had a choice between YouTube being completely locked down with no option to whitelist channels or letting them watch almost anything (although I think this has changed since but it's too late now for those of us with children that age).

Now, there is no way I can whitelist contact/groups on WhatsApp or Discord servers/friends. Once they hit 13, pretty much any option to restrict anything feels taken away from you as a parent.

Luckily, I have sensible children (I think!) but it's really hard as a parent trying to both be reasonably responsible, but not deny all technology, it's really hard to navigate a sensible course.

I haven't done the sums to compare expenses, but when they are young childcare/lost earnings is definitely more than insurance/repair/maintenance costs (and tax, although in my country you pay tax as a tenant too).

I taught university-level computer science and I'm not a historian by any stretch of the imagination. I know something about the history and might mention things in passing but I don't think I could legitimately teach it to other people!

I presume text messaging doesn't count whereas Discord/WhatsApp do? What about Minecraft and other games? What about school platforms which they can post comments/messages on? Is watching YouTube included? When I've filled in surveys about our children's social media use, they have included YouTube, which makes it look like every child is on social media.