tonyreadsnews writes "Usually, "Thinking of the children" is a starting point to impose limitations on video games and internet in general. For once, a study requested by UK's Prime Minister seems to be a bit more objective then most.
Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe — this isn't
just about a top-down approach. Children will be children — pushing boundaries and
taking risks. At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and
shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.
I think that is an important point that most studies miss, that just "thinking of the children" and locking the bad stuff away is actually setting them up for failure later in life.
Some other good quotes from the summary:
As we
increasingly keep our children at home because of fears for their safety outside — in what
some see as a 'risk-averse culture' — they will play out their developmental drives to
socialize and take risks in the digital world.
Another, implies that that the uniqueness of children would require that parents take an individualized approach and "parent their children":
We need to take into account children's individual strengths and vulnerabilities, because
the factors that can discriminate a 'beneficial' from a 'harmful' experience online and in
video games will often be individual factors in the child. The very same content can be
useful to a child at a certain point in their life and development and may be equally
damaging to another child. That means focusing on the child
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