On Technological Literacy of Parents

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Yet again I see an article about children being banned from using mobile phones before they are thirteen years of age and once again I find myself asking, “but what if parents had the required digital literacy to help children and teens?” and “What if teachers had that digital literacy too?” Ireland has yet, again said that it would ban children younger from 13 from using smart phones. In my eyes this is a mistake because it fails to address the technological illiteracy of their parents, and children, handicapping them for life in the 21st century.

At the same time as children are banned from using 21st century devices is there a requirement for children to go to school within their own village? Is there a requirement for free transportation for all children anywhere? I ask because we ban children from using modern tech, but we don’t live in a society that allows introverts to connect out of school hours.

We live in a car dependent society that wants to ban smart phones, thus disconnecting children from their own peers. If children below a certain age are banned, then the children that do play with tech will be exposed to people older than themselves, because their peers are not online. This makes these children vulnerable.

Smart phones can contain books via kindle, Kobo, Audible and many other apps. They can also contain educational apps, as well as fitness apps and more. Smart phones are just a medium that is misunderstood by parents, teachers, and regulators. They ban them because they don’t have the vision to help such devices benefit children.

I am not a parent so I have opinions based on ideals. I am not a teacher, although I can provide insight into how children can use and benefit from technology.

When I hear that children use TikTok and Instagram and other apps, then I am disgusted. I am disgusted because these apps aren’t about connecting one on one. They’re about broadcasting, and children shouldn’t be broadcasting. I think that Seesmic was healthy, and that Twitter before influencer culture was healthy. I think that social media today is deeply, deeply toxic.

The toxicity comes from the venture capitalists, the executives of these companies, and others first passing the message that technology is toxic, before then creating addictive apps that even I have to avoid. Hexasort, and all of the apps that are pay to win, and fail to win before you watch an advert, a dozen times, are toxic, for adults, and children. These apps are the issue. Not children. That’s why media literacy within parent and teacher communities is vital.

In the age of the car smartphones provide children with a potentially useful third space, that doesn’t require parents to drive, or for children to live next to each other not to feel disconnected.

Smartphones should be a third space for parents, teachers, and schools to connect. In theory feature phones with specialist apps for schools, children and parents would provide a useful compromise.

The article on RTS discussues how the Irish are discussing “l’influence des réseaux” on children, and we all know that I have discussed this topic, focusing on its effect on adults, let alone children. For me smartphones are a tool. For me the medium is not the problem.

The problem is that before Myspace, Twitter, Facebook and other sites we had web forums with 30-50 users per community and these small, tight-knit communities were self-regulating therefore toxic behaviour was eliminated very fast, and there was no reward for it.

During the COVID pandemic normal people were thrown onto social media, without passing via social networks for. They saw being a binfluencer as the goal, rather than conversing. The result is that you have millions of people trying to binfluence, and following people that will never, ever chat with them. Social media went from being a network of friends of friends to being a cult of personalities.

In an age where social media is about the cult of personality, there is no value in social media because social media is no longer about enabling solitary people to socialise in a safe online environment. The toxic environment comes from the very parents who spend hours watching TikTok reels, and Binstagram reels. We went from a healthy tight knit community of friends of friends, to a noisy waste of time.

I see it as a waste of time, and I’ve been using social networks since the 90s online. Today connecting with people via social media is impossible, but connecting with people via Strava, Meetup and other sites is.

Instead of banning children from owning smartphones and using social media, we should design healthy communities that connect children, according to EU norms and regulations, Silicon Valley has proved time and again that it cannot be trusted.

Banning chiildren solves the issue for children, but it doesn’t address the issue for teenagers and adults, and to me we should be fixing social media, rather than banning age groups.

My point is simple. Smartphone apps use design patterns that are toxic for adults, and children, and we need to solve those toxic patterns so that every demographic may have a healthy relationship with mobile devices, Parents, teachers, and other adults all face the same toxic apps as children.

Children are not the only vulnerable people. We are all vulnerable.