One of the central demands of the Record’s Our Kids… Our Future campaign has been demanding tough action by social media giants to tackle youth violence.
The increased level of thuggery is bad enough, but uploading attacks to platforms such as TikTok for it to go viral is humiliating.
Labour leader Keir Starmer is the latest senior political figure to back our campaign’s call for Big Tech to take responsibility. He makes the valid point that the Online Safety Bill needs strengthened if harmful content is to be stamped out.
It goes nowhere near far enough and MPs must amend the Bill to protect the vulnerable. He has also said he will act as prime minister if more needs to be done to hold the social media multinationals to account.
Technology is a force for good but the digital revolution also urgently requires public interest regulation. The Scottish Government’s summit on school violence will be an opportunity to produce workable solutions.
Underinvestment in children and young people is a serious matter and parents must also be supported to take responsibility for their kids.
School violence has been rising and leaders have been slow to respond to what is now a national scandal. Hopefully Starmer’s words will serve as a wake-up call and spur others to act with haste.
Don’t turn away
The deaths of five Scots to overdoses at horror hotels in Glasgow should send a chilling message. Despite Scottish Government pledges to tackle homelessness and reduce drug deaths, there is no turnaround in sight.
Both are closely linked. If we provided an adequate stock of social housing, the most vulnerable people could use this as a primary building block to better lives.
Our current system involves a revolving door in and out of dingy hostels and grim hotels, where addiction is perpetuated and overdoses are a way of life.
Since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament we have tried to present ourselves to the world as a country where fairness and decency flourish.
Higher standards of welfare provision and a genuine concern for the poorest in society is what marks us out as different from Westminster under the Tories.
But there is a danger of high ideals falling by the wayside if this is how we treat the most vulnerable in our society. It is clear that we are facing difficult times financially.
But society should judge itself on how it treats those who are worst off. In that regard, we are failing.
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