Who Decides?

by Cheryl Lacey, DSJ, Take The Lead On Education™, ©2024

(Nov. 12, 2024) — The Push for Age Limits on Social Media

Government proposals to enforce age limits on social media are presented as essential for protecting young minds from digital influences. At first glance, these limits may seem sensible, but the reliance on legislation and regulation raises three critical questions:

• Who should guide children’s use of technology?
• Shouldn’t parents and schools, rather than government mandates, have the primary say in these matters?
• How did it come to this?

The truth is this issue goes beyond social media restrictions.

Schools have become increasingly dependent on government guidance, waiting for directives on everything from mobile phone bans to anti-competition policies and even decisions on life-changing matters like gender identity and parent-child separation.

This dependency reflects a “Marxist mentality” infiltrating school systems, where families and communities surrender local control and responsibility in favour of centralized authority.

Breaking free from this reliance on government—or, dare it be said, “convenient compliance”—could restore decision-making power to families and the schools they choose for their children. Embracing local action allows us to reclaim accountability in ways that genuinely serve our families and communities.

There’s a real opportunity here: the digital tools fuelling our dependency can also create an urgent call to reclaim community-driven solutions. If used responsibly by adults, social media can revive family-centred decision-making and reinvigorate the competitive edge that local schools can bring to their communities.

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Technology in Schools: A Cautionary Tale

Not long ago, one-to-one device initiatives were celebrated as revolutionary in education. Unions and the government touted inequality issues due to lack of device access. Money was thrown around like confetti.

Coding, keyboarding and learning from apps began to replace teaching, handwriting, grammar and critical thinking. Global connectivity and hybrid models undermined the value of face-to-face interactions.

But this shift came with hidden costs—costs that too few anticipated and too many ignored before devices flooded schools and drowned many households.

As device usage surged, so did distractions and overuse. Instead of applying common-sense, locally tailored solutions, a blame game took hold.

Schools pointed fingers at parents for inadequate supervision; parents blamed schools for poor student behaviour and lack of discipline. Children went into hiding – behind screens and into a world without any fundamental understanding or safe place for support.

School communities increasingly handed over decision-making power to the government, hoping universal mandates would resolve the issues – whichever way the value of devices swayed.

Local action was sacrificed, eroding accountability even further in a system already struggling to meet our children’s educational needs.

So here’s what we’ve got to learn: we must recognise devices for what they are—tools for teaching, not life essentials—and manage them as such, with restricted purpose-driven access.

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