Common Knowledge and the confession of EE

EE's recognition that smartphones harm children could be the Common Knowledge Event that ends the phone based childhood

I read a fascinating article by Ben Hunt explaining the Common Knowledge Game. Whilst my brief summary is no substitute, I offer an outline below as part of explaining how Common Knowledge, combined with EE’s recent announcement, may offer a route out of the smartphone based childhood that is causing such harm to our children.

Common Knowledge is “what everyone knows that everyone knows”. To illustrate its role in forcing change, Ben uses the example of why Joe Biden had to stand down as the Democratic nominee for President (I say “had”, Ben wrote this before the inevitable decision was finally made). The botched debate with Trump, according to Common Knowledge theory, was the moment things tipped, when suddenly ‘everyone knew that everyone knew what everyone knew’.

Bear with me here, don’t switch off, it’s worth it. 

Everyone already knew that Biden was suffering from some form of mental decline (spare me the technicalities, you knew he was in bad shape prior to the debate).

Everyone also knew that other people knew this. 

But it wasn’t until Biden’s disastrous performance that everyone knew that everyone knew what everyone knew. 

It was now public knowledge, shared publicly, simultaneously, on multiple platforms. It unfolded as people watched it together. They perhaps messaged each other. They called into networks, live. The networks responded, live. It was not just that everyone knew. They already knew. But now they knew, for sure, that everyone else knew, too.

Biden was done. As Ben writes, everything Biden did from that moment on would be “seen through the lens” of the debate. His candidacy was finished. Not because of his obvious mental decline. Not because everyone knew of this mental decline. But because, now, everyone knew that everyone else knew what everyone else knew.

Ben refers to the Emperor’s New Clothes, the fable that I themed my short essay around (also saying that Biden must quit). There is a significance to the girl who calls out the truth (that the Emperor is naked) that I hadn’t appreciated before. It is not just that everyone hears her, but that everyone knows that everyone else has heard her. 

It is not the truth that sets them free. It is the shared public knowledge that everyone knows that everyone knows the truth. 

From there, things move, significantly. Presidential candidates change. Powerful careers are ended, such as Harvey Weinstein. As Ben explains, everyone knew that Weinstein was a sexual predator but it took common knowledge, created by the New York Times investigation, to ensure that everyone knew that everyone knew what everyone knew. 

So how does this link to smartphones and children? And how might it link to EE’s announcement that their product, smartphones and data, is not appropriate for those below 11 years old?

Everyone knows that smartphones are terrible for children. They expose them to myriad online harms, from porn to violence. They connect them to each other via social media at far too young an age, when they are ill equipped to cope with the complexity and volume of communication. They give kids backward and forward facing cameras and the world to send their images to. And so on, Ad Infinitum. 

We all know this. It has been written about extensively, it’s been studied in various ways and the results have been published. We see it in our kids (if we gave them smartphones) and in our friends' and families’ kids (if they did likewise). We see it in our schools, on our streets. We see it in the news. We beg our schools to ban them.

Yet, still, we give smartphones to our children. Commonly, at 11; often, younger. 

The Delay Smartphone movement seeks to combat this but I am often mystified as to why it is taking so long for the significant societal shift to take place: Why schools have been, and continue to be, so slow to respond; why politicians (in the main) do so little; why institutions, whose very aims are to protect children, aren’t throwing their weight behind the delay movement.

The answer, I believe, is held in this concept of Common Knowledge. We are, astonishingly, still missing that Common Knowledge Game event.

And it’s not like there haven’t been candidates. 

I thought the Israel-Gaza conflict might do it, as we knew that any child with a smartphone was likely to be exposed to the most horrendous images and videos of extreme, actual violence. The conflict is continuing, the horrors being seen by our children is daily. Yet, somehow, the dial hasn’t shifted as I thought it might.

The sextortion news stories that broke around April 2024 were a good possibility, I thought. The realisation that any child with a smartphone could be in contact with absolutely anyone in the world, and that among them are people who employ expert techniques to abuse and extort minors. And that everyone now knew this, and knew that everyone knew this. But, no, it didn’t seem to quite lead to changing behaviours.

The recent UK riots, being so recent, could yet qualify as the Common Knowledge event. We knew that any child with a smartphone could be watching the violence, engaging in racism and hatred, drawn into radicalisation, as the discontent played out, live. There is no doubt that many of those arrested (12 years old is the youngest, at the time of writing) were acting from a background of extreme content, viewed on their smartphones.

So perhaps it is the case that Common Knowledge is actually in play. Maybe it even took place earlier, such as with the publication of Jonathan Haidt’s excellent ‘The Anxious Generation’ or, further back, the concerns around harmful sexual behaviour in UK schools raised in 2020. Perhaps it is Common Knowledge itself that has led to EE making their extraordinary statement.

But, if so, it seems to me to be taking an inordinately long time for change to come.

I say this because it is our children being harmed and, usually, when children are at stake, things move rapidly.

Let us therefore assume that the state of Common Knowledge is yet to arise in the area of smartphones and children.

Given this assumption, I am interested in trying to create that state, to tip society towards ending the phone based childhood. And I think that EE may have just provided the opportunity.

Before I continue, I must say credit to EE. At least they have admitted it. But in doing so, I think they underestimate the true implications of their public statement. And, whilst it may seem a bit unfair to use their confession against them, well, sorry, but if you peddle products that ruin childhood, I don’t think a few harsh truths are beyond the realms of decency.  

EE have just admitted that they are akin to Big Tobacco in the 1950s and 60s, a comparison that those opposed to smartphones and children have long made.

EE know that the product they sell to children isn’t safe for children, as they have just said. And they have known it for years, which they haven’t said but is clearly implied.

They also know that 11 is still too young, but have chosen that age as it is the most convenient for them, in this latest PR attempt to mask the truth.

EE’s announcement is analogous to tobacco companies putting filters into cigarettes (before 1950, only 0.6 percent of cigarettes were filtered but by 1960 it was 51 percent of the cigarette market). Yes, our product is harming you, but with this change, it will harm you slightly less.

EE’s announcement tells us that all other providers know this, too. It tells us that Vodafone, O2 and Three are up to their necks. As are Google, Meta, Apple and ByteDance.

EE are telling us ‘We know’. Of course, we already knew that they know. And they know that we know: that the products and services that they market and sell to our children, at great profit, are harming our children. And up to about 10 minutes ago, they have done nothing to prevent it and a great deal to conceal it.

I think that EE may have acted as Ben Hunt’s “missionary”. That they have inadvertently created Common Knowledge and that this must now be driven home by all those currently campaigning in this area, of which there are many.

We must ask questions such as - What evidence do you have to support your position? How long have you known this? What steps will you start taking, immediately, to stop and reverse the harms that you have profited from? What age do you really think is appropriate for a child to have a smartphone? Do you have children? Do they have a smartphone?

We must seize this moment of equilibrium and hammer our message home. Big Tech are stuck and it is now up to us to stick them.

Common Knowledge is what everyone knows that everyone knows. Let’s seize this moment to ensure that, where smartphones and children are concerned, Common Knowledge is the state of play. We all know that children below at least the age of 16 shouldn’t have them, and we all know that we all know this.

Our modern day Phillip Morris and British American Tobacco companies are naked. We must use EE’s confession as the catalyst to shout out loud, as the girl in the fable, to ensure that we all know this, and know that we all know it. We, too, must shout.