From Coldplay to Catastrophe: What a CEO’s Scandal Teaches Us About Kids and Smartphones
It has been hard to not see that a high-profile CEO was exposed in the crowd at a Coldplay concert, caught on video having an affair with a colleague. Within hours, the footage was everywhere - TikTok, Instagram, news headlines, meme pages, Reddit threads.
The internet didn’t just witness it - it piled on and weaponised it.
Millions of strangers shared their opinions. Humiliated him and her. Analysed their marriages. Dug up their past. Laughed at their downfall. All from a few seconds of shaky video at a concert.
It’s a brutal, real-time case study of what happens when mistakes go viral and how unforgiving cyber-bullying can be, even for grown ups.
Now ask yourself: if adults - a CEO and HR Manager no less - can’t escape the digital consequences of a personal decision, what happens to a 13-year-old?
Or a 10-year-old with a TikTok account?
Or a Year 5 student in a group chat at 10pm?
Mistakes Go Public — Permanently
Childhood is meant to be a time of mistakes. It is developmentally appropriate and necessary. That’s how kids learn. They push boundaries. Say the wrong thing. Try on different versions of themselves.
But smartphones and social media turn those normal, necessary missteps into permanent digital records. Posts that can't be deleted. Screenshots shared out of context. Comments that spiral into bullying.
What used to be a bad day at school now becomes a meme, a viral video, a group chat joke that lives on forever.
The Adolescent Brain Is Wired for Risk - Not Reflection
Kids and tweens are still developing the parts of their brain responsible for judgment, self-regulation, and long-term thinking. They are, by nature, impulsive. They don’t think five steps ahead.
That’s why we don’t let them drive cars. Or vote. Or get tattoos.
Yet, until now we handed them smartphones because that’s what everyone was doing - with apps designed for adult brains, algorithms built to hook and sustain attention, and social platforms where one moment of poor judgment can be captured and amplified forever.
What Children Need: Privacy to Grow
If a grown man and woman with decades of life experience can’t escape online shaming, what hope does a child have?
Let’s give our kids what that CEO and his HR Manager probably wish they had:
- A chance to learn in private.
- The grace to make mistakes offline.
- Time to grow without the world watching.
A Better Way Forward
We’re not anti-technology. But we are pro-childhood and letting kids be kids for longer.
Delaying smartphones and social media for children - especially during primary school years - is not about fear.
It’s about protection.
It’s about timing.
It’s about letting kids be kids, able to make mistakes with less high stakes.
Until now it has been very challenging to delay due to social isolation. But now parents all over Australia are joining together to hit pause on smartphones in their school communities through waitmate.org.au - a platform for collective action, support, and sanity in a world that's moving too fast.
Let’s slow down growing up.
Let’s choose privacy over pressure.
Let’s raise children, not content.
Already pledged? Share Wait Mate with your friends and networks.