UK: Almost a quarter of kids aged 5-7 have smartphones

Disclaimer: I know the article is for the UK, but I'm in the US, so my reply will be US focused

There's always more than one side to every issue...

• Social media is the devil and Parents before 2000 didn't have to worry much, or did they, about their kids being on the internet 24/7

First, you needed a computer, a pretty expensive, bulky item, and then you needed the internet, mostly tied to a fixed landline that interrupted the main form of personal communication up until around the mid 90s. Even in the late 90s, internet options that wouldn't interrupt the landline service usually had big draw-backs (usually price or shared bandwidth, etc). The point is that while the internet and social media existed back then (newsgroups, BBS, IRC, etc), their availability was limited by external factors.

Before the age of 15, my parents wouldn't allow us to have our own computers, we were limited to a few hours per day of screen time, and less than 1 hour per day on the internet. In addition, the 1 hour of internet had to be on our father's computer which was in public view. These rules didn't stop us from doing bad stuff, but it definitely limited things.

After the age of 16, we were able to have our own computers, but internet access was still limited to 1 hour per day. Fortunately for me, I had an older brother that was 18 and leaving home, so before he left, I asked him to create an account with the ISP and I'd pay the bill). At this point, I was 16 with unlimited internet, the only problem was it still interrupted the main house land line, but that changed a year or so later with DSL.

Even when the technology and availability was semi-difficult to work around, I still got into a ton of online arguments with random, unknown people about stupid stuff, formed online friendships and "relationships", sexted, even got into arguments with other jealous dudes trying to steal my online girl, etc.

All of this is to say though that while my social media experience during my teen years wasn't nearly as bad as what kids are subjected to today, my parents were right that they had reasons to be worried, and I'm sure the rules they did enforce along with the hoops I had to jump through with the tech kept me from making some pretty unfathomable mistakes which is kind of ridiculous considering everything else I did that I'm not admitting to ;-)

Today parents shove a smart phone into their child's hand to stop them from crying or to keep them busy, but many don't realize the power of influence the phone, social media, or they have over their child.

I really hate to say this, but a parent should not be a friend. My parents didn't do everything they could, but I'd give them a solid B rating (85 grade) on trying to minimize any bad influence from the internet given the tech that was reasonably priced and at their fingertips. However, today, parents just straight don't have any excuse.

There are $50 routers that have pretty extensive, standard parental tech on-board. They can limit the access to the internet per day and for certain hours, log all websites visited, deny access to certain websites, etc. There are more tech savvy options too, logging all traffic, Remote viewing, etc.

Android and Apple phones can block all incoming / outgoing, calls / SMS except for those on an approved contact list, You can deny access to certain apps, even force the phone / app to go into a limp mode when a certain "on-screen-time" is met, etc

Parents today have so much available to them to prevent their children from being "mind-controlled" by social media; however, the most important aspect is awareness or resolve to do something about it. A parents' job, until the child becomes mature enough or legally an adult, is to always present, support, and or sometimes enforce the overall best, healthiest decision.

While I won't deny that some stuff on social media has gotten out of control, I mostly think parents today are to blame and the government needs to stay out of it except if they want to enforce a higher minimum age limit for social media or try and penalize the companies for obvious negligence on not properly making the efforts to keep younger children off the platforms.