Ryan reveals his worries for teens on the internet
RYAN Tubridy believes today’s teenagers are over-exposed to the internet through their mobile phones.
The father of two told his RTÉ Radio 1 listeners yesterday: ‘The internet itself, I always feel, is the Wild West, there’s minimal policing.’
At the time, Ryan was discussing YouTuber Logan Paul, who caused outrage when he filmed the body of a man who had taken his own life at a well-known Japanese suicide hotspot, and posted it online.
The RTÉ presenter, who has two daughters, Ella and Julia, said: ‘It’s changing so much and, as a parent, there’s only so much you can do about the internet.
‘I keep boring friends about it, saying that a phone in the hand of a young person these days is the wardrobe and inside that wardrobe is Narnia, and we let them go into the wardrobe but we can’t follow them into Narnia and God knows where they’re going in there, I just don’t know.’
The late Apple boss Steve Jobs revealed in 2011 that he never allowed his children to use the then newly released iPad.
He said: ‘We limit how much technology our kids use at home.’
Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates banned his children from using mobile phones until they were 14 years old, and limited the amount of time they were allowed to use the device for after that.
Many Silicon Valley schools are deliberately low-tech – the prestigious Waldorf School shuns tablets, instead using blackboards, and teaches cooperation instead of coding.