CTP, harsh opinion: “Children end up taking drugs with the phone and with narcotics, they end up killing, because of the relationship with their parents” / He talks about a “only solution to try”

Journalist Cristian Tudor Popescu harshly criticizes the different positions of some government dignitaries regarding the access of minors to social networks and claims that “parents are not the solution, but part of the problem”. The reaction comes in the context of the public debate generated by Raed Arafat's proposal to ban the access of children under 15-16 to platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Meta or X.

In a post published on Facebook, CTP satirizes the opposition of the Minister of the Interior, Cătălin Predoiu, who stated that “in principle, I am not in favor of bans”, and the intermediate position of the Minister of Health, Alexandru Rogobete, who claims that the access of minors should be “regulated and controlled” by both authorities and parents.

The journalist believes that social networks are “at least as dangerous as drugs” and rhetorically asks why then the use of drugs for minors would not be liberalized. CTP also rejects the idea that the bans would be “impossible to apply” and gives the examples of Australia, France, Great Britain or Norway, as well as the European Union's initiatives on restricting minors' access to the Internet.

The journalist also rejects the Home Secretary's warning that the bans would lead to “an Orwellian world”. “We're already in an Orwellian world, where Big Brother is the Internet,” says CTP.

“The problem is not the bans, but the relationship between parents and children”

A central point of his criticism concerns the role of parents. Although the project supported by Raed Arafat stipulates the obligation of parental consent for the access of minors under the age of 16 to online services, Cristian Tudor Popescu claims that “parents are not the solution, they are the problem”. He accuses some adults of being, in turn, “intoxicated with TikTok” and unable to provide real guidelines or boundaries for children:

“Parents are seen by the Minister of Health as an active factor in legislating and supervising their children's access. It seems to me a misunderstanding: parents are not the solution, they are the problem. It is painful that many of them became intoxicated with TikTok and voted for God and the tortelier Simion. And Raed Arafat's project holds parents responsible: “It is forbidden to provide online services to minors under the age of 16 without validation prior parental consent”. Will these parents agree to the banning of children's access?”.

“In my opinion, children end up taking drugs with the phone and narcotics, they end up killing, because of the relationship with their parents,” continues the journalist. He says the lack of communication and parental responsibility push children “into the arms of loneliness and its monsters.”

CTP supports the temporary ban of minors' access to social networks

Regarding the education solution, invoked by the Minister of the Interior, the journalist considers it insufficient in the short term. He describes the education system in Romania as “dust and powder”, and mentions the high number of functional illiterates and the violence in schools. Even in the case of a reform started immediately, says CTP, the results would not appear until a decade from now, while “we already have generations of children and adolescents contaminated or in the process of”.

The journalist's conclusion is a sharp one: “the only solution to try is a severe ban, even if temporary, for a few years”, a measure he considers necessary “in a crisis created by adults, not children”.