Kristin Strecher

“I’m convinced the devil lives in our phones”. You could be forgiven for thinking that this was the ranting of a technophobe, however the harsh reality is the comments were made by Athena Chavarria, who worked as an executive assistant at Facebook and is now at Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic arm, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. This is a woman who works at the forefront of the emerging technology our children are accessing, yet she lives by the mantra that the last child in the class to get a phone wins

This is a message which parents should heed. When the people who make these devises are so upfront about their efforts to protect their own children from device addiction and harmful content, from a consumer point of view the manufacturer is telling us, these devices are bad for your children also. For a long time, we have watched the endless parade of people spouting the familiar tale of the educational benefits of the devices. A rational minded person looking at children using devices, will quickly notice the content being absorbed everything but educational.