Latest news with #SmartPhoneFreeChildhood
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Yahoo
Nearly Half of Young People Wish the Internet Had Never Been Invented
It's a common refrain these days that some specific invention was a mistake, in our age of seemingly every human innovation blowing up catastrophically in our faces. And what better subject of our collective remorse than the advent of the entire internet, the glorious information superhighway now turned AI slop trough? According to a new survey conducted in the UK, this appears to be the sentiment held by nearly half of young people — at least across the pond — who are mourning missing out on the diverging timeline where they aren't chronically online and wracked with brain rot. Of the nearly 1,300 total participants between the ages of 16 to 21 years old, 68 percent said they feel worse after spending time on social media. A full 50 percent said they would support a "social media curfew" cutting off how long they could spend on these apps. And astonishingly, another 47 percent outright felt that they would prefer to be living their youth in a world without the internet at all. The survey, conducted by the British Standards Institution, raises tough questions about how the internet affects teenage and young adult mental health, and what should be done to intervene — without being too controlling or draconian. "That nearly half of young people would prefer to grow up without the internet should be a wake-up call for all of us," Daisy Greenwell, co-founder of Smart Phone Free Childhood, said in a statement. "We've built a world where it's normal for children to spend hours each day in digital spaces designed to keep them hooked." The problems may start practically when the young generations are just out of the womb. Studies have shown excessive iPad use in young children, for example, to be linked with emotional and social issues as they get older. Their online experience becomes especially fraught when they're teenagers, a point when they're exploring more of the web and begin to venture into adult spaces. This comes with excitement for youngsters, but plenty of danger, too, from being targeted by predators in video games to algorithms that draw them down an extremist pipeline. The rise of AI has added a whole new dimension of ethical nightmares. On Futurism, we extensively covered the chatbot platform whose putatively kid-friendly chatbots have attempted to groom underaged users. One 14 year-old-boy even developed an unhealthy with a chatbot before dying by suicide, resulting in an ongoing lawsuit against the company. According to the recent survey, two-thirds of the participants said they spend more than two hours on social media every day. Among them, young women reported facing more harassment, at 37 percent, than young men, at 28 percent. Merely using social media may itself be a source of misery: a recent study which followed 12,000 preteens as they grew up to become teenagers over the course of three years, found that as their social media usage went up, so did their depression symptoms. "Young people are now asking for boundaries — for curfews, age checks, meaningful limits, and real protection," argued Greenwell. "They are ready for change." But it won't be that simple. "We need to make clear that a digital curfew alone is not going to protect children from the risks they face online," Rani Govender, policy manager for child safety online at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, told The Guardian. "They will be able to see all these risks at other points of the day and they will still have the same impact." More on: US Surgeon General Warns Against 13-Year-Old Using Social Media
NDTV
20-05-2025
- Health
- NDTV
Youngsters Want A Life Without Internet, New Study Shows
The internet has seemingly become ubiquitous for all genders and ages, but according to a new study, young people have had enough of the technology. The study, conducted by the British Standards Institution (BSI) over 1,294 Britons, found that almost half of young people would rather live in a world where the internet does not exist. The findings showed that 70 per cent of youngsters between 16 and 21 felt worse about themselves after spending time on social media. 50 per cent said they would support a digital curfew, meaning no access to certain apps and sites at night, while 46 per cent said they would prefer being without internet altogether. "The younger generation was promised technology that would create opportunities, improve access to information and bring people closer to their friends," said Susan Taylor Martin, chief executive, BSI. "Yet our research shows that alongside this, it is exposing young people to risk and, in many cases, negatively affecting their quality of life," she added. The study revealed that a quarter (26 per cent) of respondents spent four hours or more on social media, while a fifth spent three hours or more on gaming. Three-quarters said they had been spending more time online as a result of the pandemic. Also Read | Anti-Ageing Influencer Bryan Johnson Removes Plasma From His Body, Replaces It With... While the internet comes with perils for all, it is young women who reported higher exposure to harassment (37 per cent vs 28 per cent of young men). They were also more likely to compare their appearance or lifestyle to others, with 85 per cent doing this at least sometimes and nearly half (49 per cent) doing so often or very often. 'That nearly half of young people would prefer to grow up without the internet should be a wake-up call for all of us," said Daisy Greenwell, co-founder and director, Smart Phone Free Childhood. 'We've built a world where it's normal for children to spend hours each day in digital spaces designed to keep them people are now asking for boundaries, for curfews, age checks, meaningful limits, and real protection. They are ready for change." The development comes in the backdrop of the UK media regulator, Ofcom, ordering the websites to change algorithms that recommend content to young people and introduce strict age checks or risk facing big fines.
