Hardly a day goes by without a new study showing the adverse effect of mobile phones on children’s brains, and all sorts of bans and restrictions are being added. So far, Australia has gone furthest, introducing an outright ban on access to some social networking sites for users under 16.
It shows that even the West can still solve problems quite rationally until it becomes political.
It goes together like this: Our idea of all-powerful corporations is correct, but somewhat inaccurate. Corporate managers have enormous power as a social stratum (and thus corporations as an economic and power phenomenon), but no single corporation is all-powerful. Especially when playing against people of the same class. A Facebook corporation can stomp on a citizen Hampl or a local competitor, but it will knock the teeth out of a relatively small non-profit as long as its members are well connected and supported by some of the new aristocracy. Remember the Austrian student Max Schrems and his friends who sued Facebook long enough to force it to change the way it stores data (which cost Facebook billions)? Or the Šumava enthusiasts who for many years stopped the mining activities of a Canadian corporation with support from the highest levels of Czech politics? Let’s not forget that members of the new aristocracy are also playing against each other, and playing absolutely ruthlessly. Clever people can take advantage of such a setup.
Of course, it would be possible to support a non-profit that will claim that hours and hours spent with a smartphone are actually beneficial. Or to bribe researchers and ask them for such results. But in the real world, no manager would dare take such a step. Just as pharmaceutical companies give doctors gifts, arrange fancy conferences for them, but dare not falsify data.