The Online Safety Act age verification measures are coming into force this week in the UK to prevent kids accessing harmful materials, but now, the government is also considering new limits of kids" social media usage that could set a two-hour daily cap per platform. The Technology Secretary Peter Kyle expressed his concern about the overall time kids were spending on apps due to the apps" compulsive design.
The government is also thinking about bringing in night-time and school-time curfews to make sure kids are focusing on their education and are getting to sleep on time. These are not like parental controls, these measures aim to fully block access once the limit is reached. An announcement about these curfews is expected in the autumn.
Labour MP Lola McEvoy has been running focus groups about social media and smartphones for the last year, reaching 1,000 students around the ages of 14-15. It found that 40% of them spent at least six hours a day online with a fifth spending at least eight hours online. The survey also found that 55% of under-16s had seen inappropriate ****** or violent content and that 75% of under-16s had been contacted by strangers online.
The survey found that teens feel like they’re glued to their phones and find it difficult to disengage. There are concerns that teens lack moderation and that this is having an impact on their sleep and focus.
The kids that were interviewed in the survey noted that when limits had been reached in one app, it was easy just to open up another one. This problem wouldn’t go away under the government"s current idea to limit each platform to two hours as kids just rotate apps.
While the government claims this is just being considered right now, there’s an extremely good chance that they will go ahead with this or a slightly tweaked version of this and announce it in the autumn.
Source: Sky News | Image via Depositphotos.com