James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

When Australia’s parliament passed legislation late last year banning under-16s from social media, anxious parents across the country breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“We want Australian children to have a childhood,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said as he introduced the legislation. We need to “get kids off phones and back on the footy field.”

Plenty of parents have echoed those sentiments to me over the past decade as I interviewed more than 250 families about the challenges of parenting in a digital age. When I started my research back in 2015, my own children were just toddlers and I had complete control over their digital devices. But as I wrapped up my book

Parenting in a Digital World last year, I found myself in the thick of all the concerns parents had raised: the hours children spend glued to screens; their failure to complete chores and homework because of devices; family arguments over technology; and a lack of knowledge about what kids are even doing online.

I empathize with the mums and dads that I’d interviewed, who were trying to balance social expectations of what it means to be a good parent with the desires and demands of their children. 

From France and Norway to the UK and several US states, authorities are grasping for ways to protect kids after years of headlines about the dangers of social media. Smartphones have destroyed a generation, psychologist Jean Twenge wrote in 2017. Social media and smart phones have caused a “rewiring of childhood,” author Jonathan Haidt stated last year. 

But categoric assertions about kids and technology only deepen the anxieties of parents caught between dueling narratives. On the one hand, the media tells parents that too much screen time compromises their children’s development, and by extension, their future wellbeing. On the other, a utopian narrative about the emancipating potential of digital technologies frames them as a necessary ingredient for young people’s education and success.

Media panic has a long history — successive generations raised the alarm first about comics and radio, then cinema, television, and video games. Over the years, we’ve worried that violent videos desensitize young people and increase aggression. We’ve feared that subliminal messages in heavy metal lyrics could incite youth suicide. We also have a tendency to forget these early concerns once a new form of media captures our attention, something Kirsten Drotner, a professor of media studies, refers to as “historical amnesia.”

This media-effects research tradition continues today: Many studies

have linked social media use to conditions such as depression or low self-esteem. But rarely is there evidence of direct causation. For example, does excessive social media use lead to depression, or are some young people using social media significantly more than their peers because they’re already depressed?

Where concerns about earlier media forms focused on exposure to content, today we have an added worry: how young people interact with content. Unlike the passive consumption of TV shows, for instance, digital platforms enable people to make active choices on how to behave. They can participate in online communities and activities and create and share their own content, which has benefits but also tends to increase screen time and poses additional risks. Not only are young people exposed to all manner of explicit content, but they have the tools to create and share their own — widening the challenges for parents, police, and educators.

.

Illustration: Ibrahim Rayintakath for Bloomberg

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________