I read the following without a single shred of disbelief, but with a lot of sadness when it comes to parenting skills of many of my peers and societies reaction to such a state – which is to let state be the corrective force.
The channel found that British police deal with around 20 “social media abuse” cases a day. In the last 3 years, there have been 20,000 investigations involving adults and almost 2,000 targeting children – although, since around a third of police forces did not give up their data, the number must be higher. Over 1,200 children have been “charged with a criminal offence or given a caution, warning or fine,” including four 10-year-olds and one 9-year-old.
I have two questions to ask:
- Why are the children being cautioned or charged instead of the parents?
- Why are these parents allowing their children to use the internet without monitoring their activity?
Sadly, I suspect the answer to both questions to revolve around the same idea…
Paul O'Flaherty 