Why it’s time to protect older people on the internet – not just the young

They come almost daily, seeking guidance and help. On the "Scams" community on Reddit, people ask about how to help their parents or grandparents with rescuing them from the grips of scammers they believe to be romantic interests, the government, or others with apparently unbelievable offers.

"Long story short, my dad (73M) has been obsessed with this 'Melissa' (43F) chick that found him on Facebook. He's not tech savvy in the slightest," reads one example. "He's lost friends, lost his house, is malnourished and has been losing his family over the past three years because this allegedly multimillionaire German supposedly likes him and wants to marry him."

It is horrifying and entirely characteristic. Children, grandchildren, and other concerned people post about what their loved ones are sacrificing – often not only vast amounts of money, but their health and wellbeing besides. Very often the stories end with contact being cut, since the victims are so unwilling to believe that they are being manipulated.

There are no calls to address this by regulating who can use the internet. Instead, the very valuable work that online safety campaigners and other groups do focuses on the criminals, rather than the victims.

Contrast that to the clamp down on the use of the internet by children. It has been a longstanding and international campaign by politicians and regulators who argue that the technology is inherently unsafe and that young people should be protected from it.

Last week, Australia made the dramatic announcement that it would ban under-16s from using social networks entirely.

Today it has been reported that the UK government is considering backing a private members’ bill in parliament calling for the same thing. The Times reported that ministers are weighing up whether to back a ban after growing calls from parents for more restrictions. The Smartphone Free Childhood grassroots campaign group claims to have 150,000 members working to “change the culture between children and smartphones”.

As he announced the new legislation, Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, did mention parents – but again as people who are concerned, not people to be concerned about. "I've spoken to thousands of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles,” he said. “They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online."

But those thousands of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles should be worrying about themselves, too.

Young people and old people have plenty to share with each other, and the numbers suggest that they want to do so. Last year, research commissioned by the UK Safer Internet Centre for its Safer Internet Day campaign showed that 57 per cent of young people feel that they face help to educate their parents and carers about being safe online.

Separate research from Vodafone indicated that almost half of parents feel their children have learnt more than them about technology, when they reach the age of around 12.

It means that many young people are finding themselves on an internet that they understand better than their parents, with all the dangers that suggests. Ask any expert and they will report that the web is filled with perils, especially widespread grooming and child sexual abuse imagery – problems that are much bigger than their focus in the media might suggest.

open image in gallery

Companies have looked to fix this with tools that allow parents to check in on what their children are doing; campaigners have looked to educate both the parents and their children.

This week, on the other side of the world, many looked to make sense of the election by digging into the demographics and understanding how they see the world.

The New Republic asked "How did Kamala Harris lose young male voters by this much?" And suggested that the move away from the Democrats was in part the result of their junk media diet. This shattered "illusions that Gen Z – a cohort that statistically reads fewer books, comprehends less information and predominantly gets their news from social media – skews more progressive than previous generations", it argued.

open image in gallery

Many pointed to the kind of seductive, sinister content that supposedly awaits those young people when they get online. Targets range from the truly malevolent (Andrew Tate) to the largely misunderstood (Joe Rogan); the more compassionate argued that there needs to be a similar kind of movement focused on spreading progressive ideas, while others suggested that the election result was simple a case of young people having been poisoned on the internet.

But one great success of the right is that it has accepted the internet as a place for a new kind of content, and offered that. And purveyors of disinformation have also capitalised, spreading conspiracy theories that are often taken at face value.

Banning young people from the internet won't stop that kind of interference or other out and out online criminality.

We would do better to treat young people with the same kind of nuanced and sensitive concern that we offer to older generations: compassion, not censure – and a commitment to build a better internet, rather than take away access from the one that exists.