Children Need Real Smartphone Regulation

Children Need Clear Smartphone Regulation

Smartphone regulation is long overdue. We live in a world where almost everything is protected and regulated – except the device children hold in their hands for hours every day. A smartphone today is a direct gateway to violence, pornography, manipulation, addictive design, and social pressure. Yet we treat it as if it were a harmless toy. That is not freedom. That is negligence.

Child protection used to be common sense

I grew up in a time when protection was taken for granted, a time that now feels almost nostalgic. Video rental stores had restricted areas children could not enter. TV stations structured their programming clearly: children’s content during the day, adult content at night. Cinema, alcohol, and cigarettes were strictly regulated. All of this served one simple purpose: shielding young people from things that could overwhelm their development.

The digital world is an unprotected space

Only online have we abandoned this logic. Precisely where the risks are greatest, we allow the most freedom. It is particularly absurd that in Germany, data protection is taken more seriously than the mental health of children. Their data is safer than their development.

Why politics is failing

The reasons are well known. Many decision-makers do not understand the technology. Parents are overwhelmed or left alone. Tech companies profit from maximum usage. And we confuse digital irresponsibility with digital freedom.

Three simple steps for real protection

First: Social media needs clear age ratings, just like films, alcohol, or gambling. We do not need to reinvent anything – we simply need to apply what already works and is legally established.

Second: Companies must be required to implement age verification and filters that cannot be bypassed with two clicks. Not voluntarily, but mandatorily.

Third: My proposal is a teen phone (U16) – smartphones that offer everything young people need: calling, messaging, music, camera, games – but not everything that harms them. No social media, no uncontrolled browser, no backdoors.

No excuse for more control

This demand must not be misused. It is not about creating new authorities or slowing down innovation. It is not about expanding surveillance or exerting political control. The focus is solely on protecting children and adolescents in a world that has become faster and more permeable than their development can keep up with.

Regulation is responsibility

Critics often claim that children will find ways to circumvent restrictions. Some will. Some drink alcohol, some smoke, some obtain things they should not have. Yet no one would argue that alcohol or cigarettes should therefore be freely accessible.

Regulation does not prevent everything, but it prevents enough to justify it. For decades, we have protected children from anything that could endanger their development. Only with smartphones have we looked the other way. It is time to close this blind spot – out of responsibility and for a healthy future with adults who can shape this world. And every day we delay implementation is another day children and adolescents remain exposed to these risks without protection.

Other countries are taking action – but not where it truly matters

Australia, France, Singapore, and the Netherlands have already taken steps by restricting or banning smartphones in schools. It is a start, but it is not the solution. These measures protect children only during school hours – a few hours a day, in a single location. Yet the real risks do not arise in the classroom but everywhere else: at home, on the way to school, during leisure time, at night in bed, in social networks, in chats, in games, in algorithmic environments that offer no protection at all.

My demand goes further. This is not about being anti‑technology or longing for an offline utopia. It is about modern, concrete child protection in a digital world that moves faster than any young person can develop. Children need safe spaces, clear age boundaries, mandatory safety mechanisms, and devices that do not overwhelm them. Not only in school – but throughout their entire daily lives.

Other countries have shown that regulation is possible. But the decisive step – protecting children and adolescents outside of school – has not been taken by any country. This is where the responsibility begins, the responsibility we have been avoiding for years.