By John Rosemond / Tribune News Service
When I was a child, a popular comic strip was “There Oughta Be a Law.” It ran in the paper that came to our doorstep every morning and was one of the first things I went to. I later realized that at one level the cartoonist was satirizing people who hold to great faith in the ability of government to solve all manner of social problems.
I thought of TOBL when I read in General Surgery News that a group of well-intentioned folks in Colorado — Parents Against Underage Smartphones, or PAUS — are lobbying state lawmakers to draft a law that would prevent smartphone sales to children under 13. They maintain that smartphone use in pre- and young teens quickly becomes an obsession that can harm brain development, hinder social skills, and even create addiction. The best research confirms that.
The Colorado law would create a bureaucracy that would be charged with enforcing said law. The proposed law would require smartphone retailers to ask the age of the primary user before making a sale. The question then becomes: What prevents the purchaser (presumably a parent) from telling a lie? Does Colorado then create another law that imposes fines on parents who break the law and/or requires them to attend technology education programs? Those who govern us cannot, it seems, resist any opportunity to expand the powers of the state.
This legislation, should it pass, will be paid for with taxes which means that nearly everyone in Colorado will be punished because many of those who have children (a) want their children to like them, (b) cannot manage to articulate the word “no,” (c) prefer, when it comes to childrearing issues, to take the easy way out, (d) all of the above. The answer, of course, is (d).
It is not even clear that the folks at PAUS understand that the solution to the smartphone problem is for parents to take FULL responsibility for it and not allow them, period. When parents ask what I think about simply restricting their use, I ask, “Why would you want the hassle?” No smartphone, no need to police it. Much easier on all concerned.
I’ll repeat the recommendation I’ve given in prior columns: Until your child is both (a) no longer living in your home and (b) can afford the purchase of a smartphone and the monthly bill, refuse to fund anything more than a standard cellphone that will only make and receive calls (most of them will also text, but only laboriously). I know more than a few adults who own nothing more and manage to live full and satisfying lives.
“But smartphones are how today’s kids all communicate, John!”
That’s not true either. I know of teens who have nothing more than old-fashioned cellphones. If their parents are to be believed, most of them don’t like it, but they get over it, and end up acting a whole lot more like authentic human beings than their glassy-eyed peers.
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