Sienna Shackleton:

I think I was too young when I got a phone; I was six. It was a very basic little phone and it had buttons on it. Oh my God, it was the light of my life for a little while. I was not a perfect kid. I remember getting a tablet when growing up and progressing to a phone. I remember the little Apple thing that could play music. It could reel off thousands of songs and you could download everything you could ever want to listen to. It was amazing. You suddenly start growing up and you see other kids who have screen phones, games and social media and you slowly begin to ask why you do not have these yet and why you are being left out. I had arguments with my parents about this. They were bad arguments. I was not a perfect kid and I went behind their backs and did all sorts of things that should never be admitted. I get it now when my mother says to me, “It is always the phone’s fault; that is the thing that is giving you the headache and that is why you cannot sleep at night.” I understand what she says now because she is right.

I am worried about my godson getting a phone. He is three and I am worried about him watching TV too much with a device in his hand that has no restrictions because his parents do not know how to put restrictions on it. I am going back to the issue of education but if there were something available stating how you should set up your child’s phone and have it do anything you require it to do, how to restrict it, how to add guidelines and how to ensure the child cannot access anything inappropriate, it would be really helpful. Information that children can access within seconds, at the click of a button, is a cause for danger. I do not think there is any way of saying it is not.

I am quite negative about AI in general. I can go onto Snapchat and have an artificial conversation. I tried it and it felt like talking to a real person. It felt like I was having a social interaction with one of my friends. That is how real it was to me. That is scary and worrying because I do not want my family to grow up on that, saying they do not need a conversation with their best friends as they have their AI. That is not a real person. Using it will limit people. It will limit their social interaction, increase social anxiety, increase stress levels in public places and make people unable to do something like we are doing now. This is something that we should continue all the time, forever. I feel AI will be nothing but limiting if it is not regulated in the right sense and by the right people.