Parents must monitor kids’ screen time
ADenver dad says smartphones turned his two youngest sons into zombies. So he turned himself into a crusader.
Timothy Farnum, an anesthesiologist, wants Colorado to be the first state to ban smartphone sales to children younger than 13, and he already has plenty of parents on board. The behavior of his boys, ages 10 and 11, underwent striking changes when they got phones.
They became withdrawn, distracted, disinterested in playing outdoors. When he tried to take the phones away, Farnum told CNN, one of his previously easygoing sons showed symptoms that looked alarmingly like drug withdrawal: “He was very addicted to this little machine. It kind of scared me.”
Parents face an everyday challenge in trying to sort out the rapid-fire changes mobile technology is making in American life. How much is too much? Does early mastery of technology give kids a competitive edge later on?
Valid questions being sorted out by pediatric experts. Their short answer: Media are inescapable for children growing up today, and it’s up to parents to be careful and vigilant regulators.
Farnum’s initiative, which would require retailers to ask pointed questions of shoppers about who will use new phones and maintain exhaustive records, is a long shot, and he admits as much. He hopes, he says, to at least get parents to examine current scientific studies on the effects of screen time on young children and teens to better enable them to set guidelines for their own families.
Kelly exposed Jones for fool that he is
Television news personality Megyn Kelly’s much publicized interview program Sunday night on NBC was clearly a publicity stunt to maximize the network’s ratings. Her interview subject, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, clearly had his own agenda to broaden his audience of badly misinformed Americans who choose to believe nonsense over facts.
We were prepared to denounce Kelly and NBC for giving a platform to Jones, who ranks among the most abhorrent people on the planet.
Instead, Kelly stood her ground and showed Jones to be the paranoid clown that he is. She also offered lots of evidence that the most powerful person on the planet, President Donald Trump, is among Jones’ fans.
Here’s how dangerous Jones is: He goes on his website, Infowars, spouting halfcocked theories about serious news events. His followers then react by threatening or attacking the subjects of Jones’ bogus reports.
For example, in December 2014 Jones denounced as a hoax the 2012 massacre of 20 young schoolchildren and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. “The whole thing was a fake …,” he stated. “It just pretty much didn’t happen.” The “evidence” he cited was a doctored photograph posted on the internet.
A Florida professor, James Tracy, began badgering bereaved Sandy Hook parents, demanding that they provide proof of their children’s deaths. Another Florida resident, Lucy Richards, began sending death threats to another bereaved parent. She was sentenced two weeks ago to five months in prison.
Pressed by Kelly, Jones refused to apologize for the pain he caused those parents.
That this blowhard hoaxer receives serious attention in the most powerful corners of the White House is the most frightening revelation of all.