Its gleaming gates rise from the murky waters of the River Thames, and next week one of the country’s most under-sung feats of engineering will receive a visit from one of its highest-profile fans, the Emperor of Japan. But for most of us, planning a trip there is unbelievably fiddly.
Its gleaming gates rise from the murky waters of the River Thames like towers in a medieval castle wall, and next week one of the country’s most under-sung feats of engineering will receive a visit from one of its highest-profile fans.
The Emperor and Empress of Japan are making a private trip to the Thames Barrier before the engagements of their state visit next week. According to a touching article in The Times, Emperor Naruhito, when crown prince, devoted his postgraduate thesis to the river while at Oxford University in the 1980s.
And why shouldn’t they? To stand only metres from one of those giant rotating gates is awe-inspiring.
Except, unless you’re the Emperor of Japan and have imperial levels of administrative support (well, access to private boat trips and chauffeurs), the planning is unbelievably fiddly. In which case, read on.
For the steel-gated super-structure is surprisingly inaccessible.
I wanted to go because my five-year-old son is a budding engineer, into steam trains, diesels, modern trains, trams, buses and so on – and his grandparents were visiting us.
We needed a rainproof daytrip with multi-generational appeal, ie suitable for differing concentration spans and levels of mobility: one member of the group would want to run around constantly; another member would really not.
Even in five years, minus the lockdowns, we’ve ticked off many London attractions. So I cast my mind east and settled on the Thames Barrier. It’s one of the largest movable flood barriers in the world, according to the Environment Agency. And climate change is only making flood defences more topical. The other adults assured me they wouldn’t find it too nerdy.
That was the easy part. I imagined there would be a visitor centre just next to the barrier, from where a boat-trip would take visitors right up close. And a shop where you could buy postcards, cups of tea and books about Charles Draper, the engineer whose cooker’s gas taps gave him the inspiration for the rotating gates.
I adjusted my expectations when I found the barrier isn’t obvious from Google Maps. Que?
And if you want to pass between its gates by boat, the nearest pier is more than 1.5 miles away from the visitor centre car park.
Let’s start with the boat part.
You can take the Uber Clipper, which sails through the barrier, to Royal Woolwich Arsenal, disembark, have a quick coffee, and sail back the other way. There is a Thames Barrier Park on the other side of the river, so, on your return trip you’d need to hop back only one stop to Royal Wharf Pier, and then it’s a 15-20-minute walk away. Apparently there’s a great café there and some eye-impressive topiary, but we didn’t get there because the mobility issues put it out of our reach.
Yours to print out and draw on any missing elements
So accustomed am I to Google’s omniscience that I feel cheated when it turns out to be fallible and I should have consulted other, more British maps, such as Streetmap. So Royal Woolwich Arsenal, for example, is not just the old military buildings turned into tidy streets of private residences. A coffee shop is squeezed into one of two Grade 2-listed guardrooms, and the large Visitors’ Book Café, which has a full brunch menu, sits just the other side of a courtyard adorned with sculptures. Neither of these was obvious in advance. Had they been, we could have enjoyed some shakshuka or avocado on sourdough – tastier than a hasty sandwich on the boat.
Between the pale grey sky and murky grey river we sailed, and passing through such powerful gates was a privilege, if a fleeting one. The Thames Barrier Park being out of our reach, we opted to pad our day out with a quick stop at Greenwich, where the grounds of the Cutty Sark, with their benches and ice cream vans, are clearly more accustomed to welcoming visitors.
There is a visitor centre, next to the barrier, but it’s only open – and its phone is only picked up – for five hours on a Saturday. The boat stops a further 1.7 miles away, so if you want to visit, you’ll need a bus or a car. We returned to Royal Woolwich Arsenal, picked up our car and drove east down a busy A road through a markedly unloved part of town that has you questioning your eyes and your memory. Did I really see a sign? Did it really point down here?
Past the tired garages and up and down over untarred roads finally looms a tall, more promising sight. Sadly, having wanted to prioritise the boat trips, we arrived at the centre at 3.37pm to find it shut. Peering through a window of the centre I saw a notice that said the centre was only open by prior appointment.
Finally paying homage, from the Thames Path beyond the shut Visitor Centre
Nonetheless, being close to the steel that was dazzling in the sunlight that had finally broken through, reinforcing the awe of seeing the structure from the water. The Thames Path bears an attractive mural of the course of the river from its source, though that its main audience when we visited – joggers – looked straight ahead. As for our five-year-old, awe-struck as he was, he also really enjoyed the little play park outside the visitor centre.
This last part will be less important to Their Majesties, but I hope their visit sparks a new interest in the structure that leads to it becoming easier to admire up close and be inspired by. There are some great things to see and do here, but it took perseverance to make them align. And the next time I go to an attraction and inwardly grumble that its marketing is too slick, I’ll remember what a hassle it is to visit something less joined up.
As a parent I face a dilemma: should I keep up with the latest tech trends and risk exposing my son to online harm, or take a conscious step back 20 years?
Six years is a very good innings for a guinea pig; it is a poor one for a badger. The bell is tolling for my trusty old Samsung phone, which after six years is slowing down. With a certain heaviness, I know I need to look for a replacement.
For me, choosing a new phone is not an opportunity to clasp within my hands the most recent years’ technological leaps and bounds; it feels more like a pointed shove to force me to get the hang of the changes the phone companies have made to their models since I was last forced to switch.
In its day, my phone was perfect for live news reporting from the scenes of terrorist attacks such as the Westminster Bridge and Parsons Green attacks, for the German state broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. My phone was ready and well-equipped, with a nice big Qwerty keyboard for writing copy at speed, and a good-quality camera that could record video and audio. Off went my photos to Bonn and up went web pages with my byline on them. I even invested in a DSLR camera so I could add better quality pictures to my copy – though that proved cumbersome and has largely stayed in the cupboard.
I am more desk-based now, and the sheen of ever fancier smartphones has for me been eroded by two reality checks: first, the number of local reports about phone thefts by muggers speeding by on e-scooters or e-bikes, and second, the effect my phone habits could have on my son. Perhaps my concern should extend to all the children who might see me using my phone, but I’m not sure I can put myself through the pain of smartphone-loss for children who don’t often see my habit.
The sheen of ever fancier smartphones has for me been eroded by two reality checks: first, the number of local reports about phone thefts by muggers speeding by on e-scooters or e-bikes, and second, the effect my phone habits could have on my son.
And a habit it is – checking the weather, travel times, email, the headlines if I have a couple of minutes’ dead time. To me this seems harmless: I am not exposing myself to either the harmful or illegal content covered in the newly passed Online Safety Act. But I am demonstrating that free minutes here and there can be absorbed by taking your phone out and staring at its screen, rather than by reading a newspaper or a book or engaging with the people or sights and sounds around you. And by leaving my phone around the house for the odd photo or video, I’m giving the message that this tiny omni-wizard is a harmless, benevolent part of the furniture. And my big fear is that my son or his friends replicate these habits when handed a smartphone, and stumble across online nasties. Or that he becomes addicted to the stream of endless content offered to users.
What would I lose in saying no to a smartphone? I can do without the things I haven’t yet got used to, such as a games, AI editing technology (err, what?), a NASA-grade camera, and a sharper screen for watching films I don’t want to watch on something the size of a large matchbox.
But when it comes to saying goodbye to the things I have got used to, that’s a challenge. A quick look for dumb phones brings up designs for as little as £65 with big buttons and little else. Several are aimed at older people, presumably with poorer eyesight and less dexterity. No Qwerty keyboard; back to slow-texting as we did in the noughties, and no email. A few come with apps, or limited versions of them, such as WhatsApp messaging but no video or audio calling. So then, how would my son chat to his grandparents? We’d have to Zoom from a laptop over the home Wi-Fi. And out and about recently, I needed to scan a QR code to book a medical appointment, which would have been beyond the wit of such a device. I’m sure there are ways to manage without of the fast-fixes we’ve got used to, but they’re less convenient.
Simpler times: dumb phones courtesy of Doro (left and centre) and Nokia
A dumb phone would require a conscious getting out of the tech habits I’ve got into, saving more online tasks for a home computer and leaving the home with lots of reading material, plus pen and paper to keep a note of all those tasks. All of which takes effort.
What I’d like is two phones – one smart and one dumb, with paired SIM cards, so I can use the dumb handset publicly and keep the other for specific occasions. But I’m trying to swim against the tide and feeling like a very small minnow indeed.
Smartphone boycotters can learn from the match girl strike and other historical protests.
Meta’s assets totalled nearly US$230 billion last year; Pinterest’s were over $3.5 billion and Beijing-based ByteDance, parent company of Tik Tok, was valued at $220 billion. Between them they have attracted billions of users, and, enabled by the spread of smartphones, transformed the way that young people especially communicate, spend time alone and carry out friendships.
But parents’ concern at the impact of what their children are viewing, and the tech companies’ slow responses to a drip-drip-drip of teenage deaths linked to harmful online content, have pushed parents’ patience to the limit. In the last month an estimated 20,000 have joined a grassroots protest group – Parents United for a Smartphone-Free Childhood – whose founders are hastily developing a campaign strategy.
This pushback against the march of big tech cannot come soon enough, and if well co-ordinated it could finally give parents a weapon: their numbers.
The stats are becoming all too familiar – half of nine-year-olds own a smartphone and 68 per cent of children as young as three use it to get online. Drill down and it gets more startling: according to a Statista survey of 13-17-year-olds, 30 per cent of TikTok users had seen sexualised images or been trolled anonymously on the platform in the previous month; 14 per cent of respondents who visited YouTube had recently seen “violent or gory” content, and 10 per cent of respondents “had seen images of diet restriction on Instagram”.
But these aren’t the only forms of online harm. I attended a meeting recently in the Palace of Westminster where one speaker argued that just as bad, especially for teenagers, are the algorithms that promote content that leads to peer comparison and discontent, which niggles away at contentment and self-confidence.
The age checks on which they rely will be brought in by the tech companies, who thus far haven’t proven the most trustworthy partners on child safeguarding.
Some of these hi-tech problems will require hi-tech solutions and new laws. But might there also be some far older wisdom that could help us a society chart a course to a safer online experience for young people?
The Government’s finally passed Online Safety Bill marks a pushback, making the tech companies legally responsible for keeping children and young people safe online. It mandates platforms to protect children from “harmful or age-inappropriate” content such as porn, depictions of violence, bullying, and sites promoting anorexia, and platforms will face tougher scrutiny of the measures they take to ensure under-13s can’t have social media accounts.
However, these changes won’t take effect until partway through 2025 at the earliest; the age checks on which they rely will be brought in by the tech companies, who thus far haven’t proven the most trustworthy partners on child safeguarding.
What are parents to do? And increasingly, employers and economists? After all, youth mental health experts were quick to point the finger at social media following the Resolution Foundation research that found five per cent of 20 to 24-year-olds were economically inactive due to ill health last year and 34 per cent of 18 to 24s reported symptoms of mental health conditions such as depression or anxiety – a reversal from two decades ago, when they had the lowest incidence of such disorders at only 24 per cent.
Sat indoors, not interacting and liable to stumble across harmful content. Photo: Freepik
The Department for Education wants heads to ban mobiles in school, which some already do. But what about outside school hours? As one participant and parent at the meeting asked, “Isn’t the genie already out of the bottle?”
A couple of voices suggested young people needed an engaging real-life alternative to their screens that involved learning to take risks, such as rock-climbing. Another added that young people are too protected in the real world and not protected enough online.
One woman who has felt the sharpest cost of this inadequate protection is Esther Ghey. I would have hoped that the tech companies would be quick to change the ways their platforms work once they knew about the harmful material that her teenager Brianna was able to view online and the violent material her killers were able to discuss online.
But then I hoped the same after 14-year-old Molly Russell took her own life in 2017 having viewed content promoting self-harm and suicide on Instagram. Instead, her family were made to wait two years for Meta, parent company of Instagram, to provide evidence for her inquest. Representatives from Meta and Pinterest apologised at the inquest, five years after her death. Big deal.
Molly and Brianna were not just vulnerable teenagers – they were victims of the powerful machinery of Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions.
Parents can – in theory – enact all parental controls offered by their internet provider, limit screen time and ban phones from their children’s bedrooms at night, although setting and reinforcing boundaries can be exhausting. Esther Ghey said Brianna’s phone usage “was a constant battle between me and her”. Other parents may lack the capacity to, or just not feel the need to, carry out such measures. And it only takes one child to share material for it to become a problem for a whole peer group.
It’s a good step that phones are entering the market that are designed to be safe for children, with parental controls and minimal access to the internet. But they don’t get kids rock-climbing (or your wholesome outdoor team activity of choice), they still normalise children’s phone use, and they require parents to spend more time monitoring their own phones to check their children’s usage.
So what’s to be done?
Molly and Brianna were not just vulnerable teenagers – they were victims of the powerful machinery of Third and Fourth Industrial Revolutions, the rapid advances in tech that have taken computers from the office to the pocket and loaded them up with the capability of dozens of devices combined.
Molly’s father Ian has teamed up with Esther Ghey to work together on holding the tech companies to account. And thanks to Parents United for a Smartphone Free Childhood, other parents now have a way of voicing their fears in a co-ordinated way, to try to prevent the next disaster. Organisers Clare Fernyhough and Daisy Greenwell estimate that already some 20,000 people have joined, from every county across Britain. This is an online campaign for an online age: it was sparked by a post by Greenwell in the fertile soil of Instagram, and communities are organised into WhatsApp groups. Nonetheless, the pair are encouraging parents not to give children smartphones until 14 and social media access until 16, and they have put together resources to help members urge headteachers to restrict, and other parents to delay, smartphone usage.
Examples like William Booth are a reminder that, when it comes to systemic challenges, individuals are not without agency.
But what if these steps aren’t enough? History recalls some impressive David-vs-Goliath campaign victories that could be of use here. In the first Industrial Revolution, exhausted and overworked women and children lost limbs and even lives in the newly invented machinery. According to a landmark report commissioned by the House of Commons in 1832, these workers were often “abandoned from the moment that an accident occurs; their wages are stopped, no medical attendance is provided, and whatever the extent of the injury, no compensation is afforded.” Years passed from the creation of these voracious machines to reformers such as Lord Shaftesbury, a politician driven by his Evangelical Christian faith, passing laws to cap children’s hours at 58 hours a week and introduce other safeguards.
A few decades later, the Bryant and May match company was employing hundreds of East End women to make matches using white phosphorus, which can cause phosphorus necrosis of the jaw or Phossy Jaw. The employees formed a union and went on strike; the Salvation Army, led by William Booth, another social reformer inspired by his Christian beliefs to help people in poverty, set up their own factory in 1891 offering better working conditions including the use of less toxic red phosphorus. Although their factory only ran for 10 years, the episode spelt bad publicity for Bryant and May and a ban on the use of white phosphorus in matches followed shortly after.
A Salvation Army matchbox. Image courtesy of The Salvation Army International Heritage Centre
Examples like William Booth are a reminder that, when it comes to systemic challenges, individuals are not without agency. But other chapters in history underline that one person’s vision or persistence may need to be amplified by scale to be taken seriously. Had the civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to give up her seat for a white passenger, boycotted the buses alone, the authorities in Montgomery would have shrugged their shoulders. But when 40,000 other Black passengers, led by Rev Martin Luther King, joined her, the authorities could not afford to ignore them.
So how do these three stories relate to young people’s social media use?
The harmful effects of social media are a global issue, and if tech companies boast revenues greater than the GDP of several countries, governments may need to work together to get them to listen. And any calls from governments for better regulation and self-policing will be amplified if backed up by millions of parents.
Perhaps we’re seeing the start of this: if the thousands of Parents United for a Smartphone Free Childhood can grow in number and start conversations with schools and other parents, then the demand for smartphones and their dominance of some young people’s lives can be challenged. Such conversations can’t come soon enough. But how can parents make themselves heard? And what do nineteenth-century industrialists, East End match girls or 1950s African Americans have to do with it?
The parallel, in Christian jargon, is the undervaluing of the human person. The tech companies do not just exist to help us stay in touch with our friends or look cooler. So bear with me, if you will, for a thought exercise.
In short, and I wince: adults’ relationship with smartphones needs to be rethought just as much as children’s.
The Shaftesburies of our day need to ensure existing laws are applied, that the tech companies’ promised age controls are water-tight, and harsh penalties are applied for platforms that fail to take down harmful or illegal content. The William Booths need to provide alternatives to dopamine-inducing social media, that affirm the value of each young person and teach them to manage real-world, appropriate levels of risk. Hence the suggestion of rock-climbing or similar. And could we also imagine social network being conceived, funded and constructed on European soil which takes the wellbeing of its users seriously? And some form of online policing?
In the meantime, the Rosa Parks of our age – which is all of us social media users, and Parents United for a Smartphone Free Childhood could lead the way – must consider investing in a dumb phone and enacting a smartphone boycott, at least outside our professional lives. The half of nine-year-olds who reportedly own smartphones can’t buy or fund them themselves; therefore, pretty much half of parents of nine-year-olds have passed theirs on or bought new ones and kept paying the bills. That gives them leverage.
Young people may do better to log off and learn to manage real-world risk. Photo: David Bortnyk
Leading by example would also mean parents swapping their own smartphones for dumbphones – at least in front of their children. An old laptop could be kept in the kitchen for searches that then become public, functional and brief – just like twentieth-century dips into the Phone Book or Yellow Pages. Smartphone ownership could be seen as a privilege of maturity like drinking, learning to drive and (previously) smoking, and doom-scrolling in front of children blacklisted. In short, and I wince: adults’ relationship with smartphones needs to be rethought just as much as children’s.
The reforms of Shaftesbury and others and the ban on white phosphorus helped lay the foundation for today’s health and safety laws. The bus boycott was a key step in the Civil Rights Movement’s long and hard-fought journey towards equality.
The tragic, needless loss of the lives of Brianna and Molly (and, sadly, others) must lead to laws and a wider social rethink that lay the foundations for a safer, more grown-up, properly regulated, internet age. We need to set ourselves on a course from where future generations will look back aghast, just as we do on child labour or white phosphorus or racial segregation, and ask, ‘What were they thinking?’
This article first appeared on Seen & Unseen. Top image: Sarah Chapman and the match girls strike committee. Wellcome Collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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