Minnie’s Musings

Toothless Ofcom has taken yet another light touch approach to protecting women and girls online with its optional guidance that the tech giants introduce a prompt for those trolling on their platforms.

Quel surprise. Because we couldn’t possibly stand up to or even have the modest expectation that a bunch of juvenile dweebs take some social responsibility for the garbage that is too frequently published on their platforms.

I could digress here on whether we should regard a social media platform as a publisher (we should) in the same way we do print and broadcast media. Primarily because the same defamation laws could then be applied and all sorts of garbage would have to be withdrawn.

But I must keep to the point.

The irate pundit on the Today programme has just announced that schools and colleges need to take a lead on teaching students how to behave on social media platforms and respond to the nastiness that has transferred from the playground to the ether.

After over a decade of doing just that in form time, PSHCE, parent teacher conferences not to mention using up my balsam tissues (I am so good to my students) comforting a variety of distraught teenagers following an online, late night spat with former BFF, I find this kind of demand vexatious in the extreme.

What on earth do politicians and pundits think we have been doing?! Advising our junior citizens to read a good quality broadsheet over their boiled eggs and toasted soldiers?!

Most schools in the locality have introduced magnetic phone pouches to take it a step further. And introduced fines for broken pouches. And identified students who have two phones if not three. And confiscated the lot.

Pray tell. What more do people want? Perhaps parents need to take up the cudgel in the 17 hours students are under their supervision. Perhaps parents should encourage their offspring to come off platforms which make them unhappy. Or remove phones at least an hour before bedtime to be produced again at breakfast.

Perhaps parents need to take a lead and be prepared to withstand the temper tantrums that will ensue. It won’t be easy, but the results will make for a happier young person whose confidence and self esteem isn’t constantly undermined. After all, you would conduct an intervention if they were addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Twice I persuaded our youngest to take herself off InstaSnapShit for a while and she was so much happier.