From NHS staff being harassed and filmed to Tottenham Hotspur fans weaponising their phones against boss Ange Postecoglou, The Mirror’s Assistant Editor and columnist Darren Lewis says childhoods are ‘poisoned’ by the effect of mobiles and their content
Ange Postecoglou is the affable Australian in charge of Premier League team Tottenham Hotspur.
Speak to any of their fans and they’ll tell you that, sitting 14th of the league’s 20 clubs with the season end approaching, things haven’t been going too well for him. But you don’t need to know much about the game to appreciate Postecoglu’s view on supporters weaponising their phones to record themselves abusing him, before posting the footage online.
“They just want a reaction,” he said at the weekend. “For young people, it’s more dangerous than any other weapon in the world as far as I’m concerned. If I don’t pull them up, especially young kids who pull up a phone and put it in my face, what’s stopping them from doing that in the schoolyard?
“What’s stopping them from doing that in general life? It’s a bullying mechanism.”
The NHS staff being harassed by members of the public who film them with phones and threaten to post footage online would agree. Workers union Unison has revealed the results of a survey of thousands of UK health workers. One in seven has been kicked, slapped, punched or forced to endure unwanted filming in the past year. Staff intimidated and fearful.
It comes weeks after the National Association of Head Teachers revealed 82% of its members, around 1,600, had been abused by parents in the past year with 10% suffering physical violence.
Let’s not kid ourselves, the cameraphone has been a game changer in uncovering wrongdoing, unmasking liars and providing much-needed clarity in situations where ordinary people are short-changed. It has also left delusional, bureaucratic management staff, unwilling to appreciate the realities of unacceptable waits for us ordinary people in A&E, with nowhere to hide.
But the smartphone has also accelerated the breakdown of social boundaries and norms to such an extent it is no exaggeration to accept two things. First, we need to accept that the day a youngster gets a smartphone is the day their childhood is tainted by a poison from which many kids never recover.
Ask the teachers fighting a losing battle to keep the devices out of the classroom. Or the kids recording others fighting.
DISRESPECTED
Second, the day many adults start using a smartphone is the day they start to take leave of their senses. Ask the shopworkers disrespected on a regular basis.
Ask the security staff abused for the crime of enforcing the rules as others with their camera phones perform the equivalent of rubbernecking.
Or the service industry staff subjected to the entitlement and arrogance of those who believe the phone gives them the right to treat them as second class citizens.
We are in a digital hostile environment, the most worrying aspect of which is that there is currently no solution.
Especially in a tech-dominated, interconnected world from which there is no turning back. Schools already treat internet restraint to their children, to no avail. Perhaps it might be a better idea to start with the adults.
