Guest Post by Scott Adams
Here’s the basic problem.
Kids as young as eleven have smartphones. That situation won’t change.
A kid with a smartphone has access to any illegal drug in the world, as well as all the peer pressure in the world.
Pills are small, cheap, odorless, widely available, and nearly impossible for a parent to find in a bedroom search. When you have this situation, the next generation is lost.
That is our current situation.
To address the problem, you would need the phone companies to allow parents full access to all messages on a kid’s phone. And this feature should be mandatory, not optional. Parents need to see all messages, and all photos, from all apps.
The phone companies won’t make that capability widely available on their own because it would reduce their income. So the government needs to force phone companies to give parents that level of control to protect their kids. If you want to put a clamp on drug use, the only way is for parents to have full control of teen communications. Every message, every time. And it needs to be mandatory for anyone under 18.
I know what you are going to say. You’re going to say good parenting is all you need. But my observation is that no more than 20% of kids can be “parented” away from temptation. The other 80% are totally out of luck.
Today, you can limit a kid’s smartphone and Wifi use in a variety of ways. But if a teen has 1% freedom to contact anyone for anything, that’s all it takes.
My observation is that smartphones have made half of all adults mentally ill. I mean that literally, not figuratively. The business model of phones is addiction, not value. And they addict you at the expense of the things humans need in their lives to be happy and healthy.
Kids have it worse. They haven’t developed any natural defenses. They are pure victims.
Today I declare the phone companies to be enemies of the state. They are ruining everything you love, and everything you care about. And they are doing it right in front of you.
If this is not already obvious to you, it probably means you’re a smartphone addict. A normal person’s brain will spontaneously generate a protective illusion to support an addiction. If you see no problem with smartphones causing drug addiction in kids, or you think I am exaggerating, you’re probably in the illusion.
If the Trump administration were to regulate the mobile phone carriers to add mandatory child-monitoring of communications, perhaps we can save the next generation. The current generation of “digital natives” is already lost. The majority of the current generation of kids are doomed to be drug addicts, either legally or illegally.
And that’s on us.
I’m not sure how “enemies of the State” is applicable here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State
As for phone service, if you’re paying the bill you have the ability to cancel the service if you think it is being misused which lets you set the rules for your children having them and your access to them and what they are being used for.
Cue the people with no kids, the people whose kids were kids decades ago, the perfect parents and the Amish…
In our household, it was periodically, without warning, “hand me your phone” time (sometimes with also having to demand a password or two). The alternative was a cancelled contract. This lead to some prime parenting opportunities, which we took full advantage of. The kids have turned out just fine, and after a couple of brief experiments with MJ, drug-free (with significant encouragement/education from mom and dad).
Our standard punishment for not heeding the rules was a week without the phone. It kept them in line pretty well.
“So the government needs to force phone companies to give parents that level of control to protect their kids. ” – Scott Adams.
Scott, with all due respect you are COMPLETELY off the mark with this. Period, full stop. The words above have been justification for EVERY bad idea and liberty killing “program” for control since the Ottoman Empire. Government needs to EXIT the “for the benefit of” business, and simply return to the business of the Constitution and liberty. When guns start enforcing “for the benefit of” anyone, the road is straight to hell from there.
Parents have a CHOICE as mentioned above, they can simply say – sorry Johnny or Jane, no cell phone for you. To have the Government FORCE any private business, no matter what the excuse to do ANYTHING for the benefit of the children, the old, the handicapped, the “less fortunate” etc. AD NAUSEUM is a recipe for disaster – and I have over 1000 years of history to prove that simple truth.
Not to mention, if kids want to get their hands on drugs, not having a phone is not going to stop them. Their friends at home and at school have phones, or they could do it over a landline or in person.
Government prohibition on drugs needs to stop, and that would take half the attraction away. That’s half the battle won. Not to mention the decrease in drug crime.
Kids will find ways around every law. The majority aren’t not stupid. (Unless they turn into snowflakes.)
It’s the phone’s fault? Therefore, you must subscribe to “It’s the gun’s fault” doctrine.
Baloney!
Everyone has a right to privacy, including children.
Sounds like Scott is having some problems on the home front with his kids.
Scott, we don’t need government making any new requirements. Parents can make the requirements as some of the commenters above have suggested.
The same could have been said of the car and the autonomy that it gave teenagers. It wasn’t possible to haul a keg of beer to a farmer’s pasture outside city limits on a bicycle. And the back seat served as a mobile motel room.
But I agree that smart phones open up unprecedented opportunities for Bad Things.
Greetings,
This is one big contest – one big game. If my opponents wish to remove themselves from the game by becoming addicted to drugs, internet porn or social media then I’m all for it. The only part of the game I need to worry about then is making sure as little of my money as possible goes in any way towards these useless eaters. It is that simple.
Look, times are gonna get a lot harder then they are now but someone willing to work hard and work smart has never had so many opportunities for success.
get the child a flip phone
Or no phone at all. At 8 years old, I am already getting the “everyone else has a smartphone” line from my oldest. SORRY, mommy and Daddy use flip phones and you’ll get yours in around 3 or 4 years.
I PROUDLY show my flip phone to anyone and brag about the money I save using prepaid minutes (at least $1200/year for my wife and I).
It’s hard enough keeping them off the computer when they are home.
With the proliferation of cell phones, there are no more pay phones in my area. When my son was little, I always sent 50 cents with him in case he needed to call me. I had no plans to give him a cell phone. But then I started noticing the pay phones were disappearing and some businesses are not nice about letting someone use their phones, that’s when he got his first cell phone. He was in middle school then. I outlined the rules and he lived up to them. I haven’t regretted it to this day.
I think you guys are missing the /sarc/ tag at the beginning of the article.
Go back and read it again, with the frame of mind that’s it’s written ironically, and I think you’ll see the article in a whole new light.
Agreed.
I think this article is a setup to be used as a comparison to show how stupid it is to support the NSA, et al. in listening to our phone calls and scooping up all our emails.
What will you do about the advent of ‘secret messaging’ like on Facebook? That’s the bigger issue here. A kid can still send a Facebook message that only that very specific device can show and only the other device can see. Even if you have the kid’s Facebook password and log into the account you won’t see the conversation until you have one of the two devices involved both of which can wipe and delete the conversation. (Also perfect for cheaters not just kids getting drugs)
As for the texting situation there is a work around. At least with AT&T. My parents got all the phones in their name and let me set up the online account for billing reasons. However, at the AT&T website there is also an option to turn on message archiving so all texts sent and received are accessible online (AT&T and the nsa already store it, so you might as well have access to it yourself). That way whoever has access to the family online account can basically see all texts if they wanted to. I’m sure whatever your phone provider is should have an equivalent? Just do the same to your kids, I don’t imagine it would be very hard and if it were you could find online faqs or ask a store employee. If you are a parent and I am guessing you are, the type of messaging like on Facebook with instant deletion is going to be more of a problem. For society as a whole because go to sites like reddit and see how many people both man and woman discover their spouse cheating off Facebook? Now imagine that they have even greater power to hide it. We call mark the cuckerberg but he chucks society as a whole lol.
My kid was forbidden from going on Facebook. And I told him I could find out if he set up an account. I also am not on Facebook. In fact, I’m on no social media at all. The kids today are using SnapChat which deletes the messages right away. I know my son uses this. But he’s over 18 now and pays for his own phone, so it’s on him now.
I don’t think is should be ironic . what kids do on cellphones is insane . any society that lets them do it is insane.
The only people who could object are drug dealers, and pedophiles .
Please identify which you are in your disparaging comment, otherwise we can safely assume you are both.
Looking up from your screen is prohibited by order of the lord archon.
Just think of all the parents who are already “failures” and could care less…..
Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
— Ludwig Von Mises
Sorry Scott…. gotta go with the posters above on that one. Governments should not dictate rules concerning minors to the phone companies…… Parents should….. with their pocketbooks!
My kids got flip phones for their 18th birthday. Prior to that, none. This was 2014.
When I was a teenager a mobile phone was the size of a briefcase (i certainly didn’t have one) but I was still smoking joints with the neighbor, trolling for someone of age to buy me beers and having probably more sex than your average teenager today. Somehow I turned out ok.
Fast forward 25 years and I don’t give my kids smartphones. When they are teenagers maybe, but I think it’s completely ridiculous to give a 9 yr/old an iPhone. I don’t care is all their friends have them. When I was a kid my folks didn’t allow TV’s in bedrooms and yes, I used the same argument I hear today about smartphones. Not changing my mind.
Well yes, there are many drawbacks to phones with easier ability to hide what is done from you parents, but also teenagers can read articles from the burning platform which is like a drug to counter the mainstream medias narrative or the schools implied socialism. It is ultimately up to the teenager’s resolve and commen sense instructed by elders or informed people in order for him/her to avoid immoral sites such as porn or superfluous distractions such as video games. As you stated anonymous, using yourself as an example, people get involved in drugs, even if not available online.
With no pay phones around, a cell phone is needed in case of emergency. A flip phone works fine. They don’t need a smart phone. Only a phone that makes calls is needed.
And we only had one TV when I was growing up, so asking for one in the bedroom was a non starter. I grew up in a lower middle class family after my parents divorced and my mom had to go back to work in the early ’60s, and she didn’t make a lot. In my household, as we got older, we eventually realized when asking for something was pointless. Only necessities.
Enemy of the state? Good! The state is the enemy of humankind. Did he suddenly get hired by the state to produce this utter nonsense? I’m far more worried about the unbelievably massive security holes enabling such access would create. Scott Adams can go fuck his bootlicking self.