Save the Children!

What I listened to

A couple of days ago I read the BBC News story "Is social media causing childhood depression?" and almost decided to blog that (I still might) because I got so angry at the author's uncritical silliness. Happily, a TED Talk appeared on my Facebook homepage the next day. "3 fears about screen time for kids — and why they're not true" was an antidote to that latest silly story about how screens are destroying childhood or even adulthood. 

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What it says

In her 11:30 minute talk, children's media expert Sara DeWitt presents and opposes with solid evidence from research three common fears that parents have about children, especially very young children, using smartphones and tablets: 1) that they make children passive, suppressing physical activity; 2) that they interfere with learning; and 3) that they disrupt social relationships with parents and others. 

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My response 

From the start, I liked DeWitt's presentation: she tells us that most American adults check their phones within five minutes of waking up, and that already had me hooked. When she went on to say that they think smartphones are necessities, I was definitely in the group of "they". I realised this a couple of years ago when I was in Australia for my annual visit to family and friends there. Naturally, I had my smartphone with me, and I thought I could get by with the wifi that abounds throughout Sydney and my family members' homes, but it wasn't enough! I needed full connectivity all the time, so within a couple of hours of landing in Sydney, I ran into a store and bought a SIM card that gave me 4G access for the next ten days. Relief! And if smartphones are essential for adults, why would we think that they are not also important for children, who do live in the same world that we adults do?

I can understand the fears of parents and others, as can DeWitt, who sensibly takes those fears seriously before showing them to be greatly exaggerated. When I'm on the BTS, I often do a quick count, and it's usual that about 60 to 80% of people are staring at their smartphones. But then I remember back forty years or so when the workers on my school bus had their heads buried in newspapers or stared blankly out of the window. I can't see how focussing on a phone screen is any less sociable than either of the other two behaviours, and just as people used to make conversation about what was in the newspaper on paper, they now do the same about the news in the online newspaper. The difference is that the smartphone version is much more convenient than carrying around a great pile of dead trees.

Of course, any technology can be used in helpful or harmful ways, but trying to stop kids using smartphones because it might interfere with exercise, with socialising or with learning is like opposing the use of paper and pens because some kids will use them to draw cartoons instead of listening to a boring teacher lecture instead of engaging the kids in active learning. Paper and pens were a great technology last century, but one of the things that struck me when I watched Michael Sandel's lectures on justice at Harvard University was the large number of students taking notes not on paper but on screens, and that was some years ago now.

Yes, children do need to be saved – especially from well-meaning adults who are wrong.