Politicians and policy makers seem to have no clue how modern day sex works.
Take former government adviser Steve Hilton.
Today he has concluded the only way to protect the under 16s from the evils of the “adult” world – aka sex – is to ban them from using smartphones.
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Writing in the Daily Mail, Hilton harks back to a simpler time, when children played in the street, walked home from school alone and actually engaged in conversation.
This era, he argues, was the epitome of childhood innocence.
Ban mobile phones for under 16s – pls read the argument and tell me if you agree: https://t.co/zFUTtPCmOq #MoreHuman
— steve hilton (@SteveHiltonx) May 24, 2016
Compare it to the world children are brought up in now in which clothes are sexualised, 50 Shades of Grey is a worldwide best-seller and Emma Watson admits to being a member of OMGYes – a website showing how to make women orgasm – and parents have a legitimate cause for concern.
Ten years ago, teenagers still had phones.
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Yes, their phone was likely to be a Nokia 3310i with the latest version of Snake and not a Rose Gold iPhone 6 with unlimited data, but that never stopped them sneaking down to watch X-rated TV channels in the dead of night, or huddling under their duvet with a laptop or magazine.
Does Hilton honestly expect us to believe he never saw any pornographic images before he reached the legal age of consent?
Undeniably, porn is on tap for today’s children – and that is a worry.
Over half of porn in the UK is accessed via a smartphone according to Pornhub’s latest statistics, but rather than taking phones from children, what the government should do is regulate the porn industry.
Banning children from having phones will only push the young further into a darker unregulated virtual world, encouraging greater secrecy and making contact and open conversation with their parents even less likely.
Children should be better educated.
Assessing the gaping holes in sex education and encouraging an honest dialogue about sex is one positive solution, instead of brushing the problem under the carpet and waiting for children to get lost in the minefield.
As for Hilton, do we really want to take advice from the CEO of a tech start-up who openly admits to not owning a smartphone himself?
