Tuesday 11 November 2014

Wait, Let Me Guess… A Clampdown On The Internet Is The Answer?

For the children, of course!
Violent video games, the sharing of indecent images on mobile phones, and other types of digital communications, are harming young people’s mental health, MPs warned on Wednesday…
*yawns* Not this again? Yet another panic about new technology.

It seems one comes along almost as frequently as iTunes updates…
Sarah Wollaston, chair of the committee, who was a GP for 24 years before becoming a Tory MP in 2010, said: “In the past if you were being bullied it might just be in the classroom. Now it follows [you] way beyond the walk home from school. It is there all the time
Well, it is for those who can’t switch the damned things off, yes.

Might such people not already have some issues before we even begin to look at bullying?
… Voluntary bodies have not suggested stopping young people using the internet. But for some young people it’s clearly a new source of stress.”
So you’ll step in where those voluntary bodies (quite sensibly) fear to tread, won’t you? Maybe not now, maybe not for a while, but soon.

You won’t be able to help yourselves.
Lucie Russell, director of campaigns and media at the charity Young Minds, said: “The 24/7 online world has the potential to massively increase young people’s stress levels and multiplies the opportunities for them to connect with others in similar distress. Websites like Tumblr, where there has been recent media focus on self-harm blogs, must do all they can to limit triggering content and that which encourages self-harming behaviour.”
What is ‘triggering content’, Lucie? Can you define it sufficiently that businesses have a hope in hell of complying (assuming they want to play the game)? I bet you can’t, because the concept itself is ridiculous, and shifts the onus onto the speaker/writer to have to avoid something that might make a total stranger ‘uncomfortable’.

All the better to control free speech…

10 comments:

Ted Treen said...

What a load of irrelevant, other-worldly manure.

Some people receive poison-pen/treatening/just nasty letters.

Do we restrict mail to over 25's and nice letters only?

Some people receive obscene/treatening/just nasty phone calls.

Do we restrict phone access to over 25's and nice calls only?

Are ALL of theose people utterly lacking in any form of real experience in the real world?

Whilst I am naturally averse to almost any form of state prohibition, I'd happily make an exception for these self-important proponents of twattery to be proscribed.

Bucko said...

It's becoming a world where adult things are banned in case a child sees them.

Soon we will all be living in Never Never Land.

Parents are no longer expected to teach children the distinction between the adult and child world. That responsibility has been binned in favour of eradication of the adult world and everyone living as children with the state as the parent.

Libertarian said...

I'm so cross I might just send off an abusive email to my MP!

Or maybe not until I've got that anonymisation fully worked out.

mike fowle said...

When I was a child, my opinion was treated with scant respect. Quite rightly. It was usually callow and uninformed by experience. Now I am old, only children's views seem to count. Is that due to the feminisation of society? Or some other cause?

Clarissa said...

Dr Sarah Wollaston has previous (and lots of it)

http://www.misanthropegirl.me.uk/2014/01/28/wollaston-smartphone-ban/

Budvar said...

The problem stems from the poor little kiddywinks gaining the upper hand over parents. Threats from the little darlings of "If I can't have my own way, I'm going to ring child line/the law and tell them you touched me up..", have some parents frightened to death of them.

I had one about 14 year old, a kid in my middle daughters class who thought it fun to ring the wife everytime I went out the house pretending to be my fancy woman, death threats at 2 am, and on and on it went. It all came to a head when the dickhead boyfriend of hers pulled up in a nicked car and threatened my wife and kids with a gun (It turned out to be an air rifle but...) This being the final straw, I went round and had a quiet word with her parents he shat himself and the mother was in tears as they were frightened to death of her and couldn't control her. It seemed they could control her after all, as they were a sight more frightened of me than they were her, and it stopped straight away. The dickead boyfriend I found out lived by the wifes grandmother and had been making a nuisance of himself with all the elderly neighbours too. I had a quiet word with him too, and he moved a short while after.

Ian Hills said...

Don't get it. Why do all these bansturbators look frigid in their photos?

ivan said...

All this wanting new regulations by control freak politicians must be the results of all the troughing they are doing at the public teat.

Maybe these wimmin MPs should be telling their feminist friends with kids to do a bit of parenting and look at exactly what those kids get up to on the internet.

Mark Wadsworth said...

That's Dr S Wollaston for you, she comes out with this misinformed nonsense all the time.

Perhaps she takes the Daily Mail seriously?

JuliaM said...

"What a load of irrelevant, other-worldly manure.

Some people receive poison-pen/treatening/just nasty letters.

Do we restrict mail to over 25's and nice letters only?"


Best not give them ideas... ;)

"Soon we will all be living in Never Never Land."

We're more than half-way there already...

" Is that due to the feminisation of society?"

In part, but I doubt it's the sole factor.

"Dr Sarah Wollaston has previous (and lots of it)"

Oh, indeed... :/

"It seemed they could control her after all, as they were a sight more frightened of me than they were her..."

And, I suspect, not at all frightened of the 'forces' of law & order, as they once would have been?