Big Father Is Watching You! The Smartphone Ban Is Nothing but a Power Grab

DR TONY RUCINSKI

IF THERE is one thing at which the modern state excels it is the ‘bait and switch’. The technique is simple: identify a genuine social crisis, whip up a panic, and then offer a solution that does little to solve the problem but everything to expand government power. We are seeing this play out with the Government’s new consultation on banning social media for under-16s.

The bait is irresistible. Every sane parent is terrified of what the internet is doing to their children. We see anxiety, addiction and exposure to pornography. We see the terrifying rise of gender ideology, with confused teenagers being nudged towards medical mutilation by algorithmic feeds that push LGBT indoctrination. When Labour ministers promise to ‘crack down’ on Big Tech and ‘keep children safe’, exhausted parents are tempted to cheer.

By ‘smartphone ban’ I mean the policy bundle now being assembled: phone-free schools plus a consultation that explicitly includes banning social media access for under-16s and tightening age assurance. The Government has already flagged enforcement and VPN circumvention as key issues. 

But look closer at the switch, and the picture darkens. What is being built here is not simply a shield for the innocent, but a cage for the family. Under the guise of child safety, the Starmer Government is assembling a mechanism that could enable two outcomes: parental penalties and expanded leverage over what lawful content is treated as ‘harmful to children’ and therefore restricted.

The Parent Tax

The first clue that this is a power grab came when Business Secretary Peter Kyle was asked who is liable if a child bypasses the new age checks (a savvy 15-year-old with a VPN, or a borrowed device). In Australia, the framework puts the onus on platforms, not parents or young people, and there are no penalties for parents or carers. But when pressed on whether British mums and dads could face fines for their child’s online activity, Kyle said: ‘Everything is on the table.’ He refused to rule out parental liability. That matters, because it leaves the door open to penalties for a teenager’s circumvention of state-mandated controls.

This is the classic inversion of responsibility. The state allows Big Tech to push addictive sludge into our homes, refuses to tackle pornography properly at source, and then hints at punishing families who cannot contain the fallout. It is, in effect, a ‘parent tax’, a policy posture designed to keep you anxious, compliant, and looking over your shoulder.

The gateway to Digital ID

Age assurance is presented as harmless, even anonymous. But enforcing a strict under-16 ban at national scale means mass age-gating for millions. In practice, this creates pressure to link your account to a permanent ID, like a passport or credit card, because companies need a paper trail to prove to the regulator that they checked your age.

Once that infrastructure exists, the internet becomes less like a public square and more like a monitored facility. The state could gain the technical capacity to link clicks and comments to a legal identity. For a political culture comfortable with recording and acting on ‘non-crime hate incidents’, that is a surveillance capability worth taking seriously.

The definition of ‘harm’

The most chilling aspect is not only surveillance, but censorship. The justification is to protect children from ‘harm’. Yet ‘harm’ is not a fixed category.

This is not just about blocking illegal acts. It is about lawful content that regulators deem ‘harmful to children’. Ofcom has already joined forces with the Global Online Safety Regulators Network, which issued a statement noting that ‘each jurisdiction will have its own approach to determining what content . . . is deemed harmful to children’.

That is the loophole that swallows freedom. To the modern progressive bureaucrat, ‘harm’ does not just mean violence. It increasingly includes dissent from the reigning orthodoxies on identity and sexuality.

We do not have to speculate about the direction of travel. Take the case of Ben Dybowski, a teaching assistant in Cardiff. He was escorted off the premises after expressing standard Christian beliefs, including the view that marriage is between a man and a woman, during a staff-only forum. The school’s reaction was telling: a letter was sent to parents stating that he was removed for ‘possible safeguarding issues’. 

If public institutions do frame lawful beliefs as a safeguarding concern, the same logic is available online, especially when regulators are empowered to police ‘harm’ at scale.

Under the new regime, ‘protecting children’ creates the mechanism to filter out ‘harmful’ content such as pro-life advocacy or criticism of gender ideology. Meanwhile, LGBT indoctrination will be treated as ‘inclusive’ and normal, and will flow freely.

The father-shaped hole

There is also an uncomfortable truth. The state can make this grab for power only because something has weakened in the home. The addiction crisis is real. A Kindred Squared survey released this month reported that 37 per cent of children starting in reception classes are not ‘school ready’, with teachers reporting pupils trying to ‘swipe’ physical books as if they were iPads.

This is the fruit of a state-driven culture that has systematically undermined parental authority, and specifically fatherhood. Fathers bring a distinct contribution to child-rearing: enforcing boundaries, tolerating short-term conflict for long-term gain and having the strength to say ‘no’.

For decades we have been told that fathers are optional. Now, faced with the chaos of un-parented children and digital addiction, the Government proposes itself as the substitute: the ‘Digital Father’, cold, bureaucratic, and interested in compliance.

The answer to a child addicted to a screen is not a government ban. It is a father with the courage to take the phone away. The ‘Smartphone Free Childhood’ movement has shown what is possible when parents unite to act together, without waiting for permission from Mr Kyle.

The alternative

Critics ask what the alternative is. The answer is not inaction; it is targeted action that hits predators rather than parents.

We should demand meaningful penalties for porn sites that fail to implement robust age gates at source. We should impose strict liability on platforms that deliberately optimise addictive feeds for minors. We must insist on ‘safety by design’ defaults that protect children without requiring mass data retention or digital ID. We can crush the online threat without building the infrastructure of a surveillance state.

The choice

The Government is offering a devil’s bargain. It promises to take away the headache of managing your child’s screen time. In exchange, it seeks greater power to penalise families, expand monitoring and shape what lawful content is accessible.

We should reject it. We all want children protected from predators and pornography. But the solution cannot be an ever bigger state, with ever deeper access into family life, and ever wider discretion over ‘harm’.

When Mr Kyle says ‘everything is on the table’, believe him. The only safety feature that really works is a family that is free, and strong enough, to say ‘no’.

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This article (Big Father is watching you! The smartphone ban is nothing but a power grab) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Dr Tony Rucinski

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