Beware the gadget

Kids as young as three and four have access to their own gadgets and shut themselves off from essential human interactions. Recent research shows that American teens spend up to 9 hours a day on their devices and not interacting with real people, not even parents.

The Surgeon-General of the US government has called for warnings to be placed on social media products just like we would do with tobacco. Also, the Singapore government is going to put in measures on screen time and device use.

The mobile device is now used as a default by parents who are too busy, unwilling, unaware, or lazy to perform their parental duties, let alone talk to each other. It is the elephant in the room of supposedly modern societies and raises an all-important question: what sort of society in this tech-consumed era are we creating when parents have stopped protecting their children from what is arguably the most insidious device ever created?

Parental roles are now easily abdicated to the internet and digital technology in the guise of embracing modernity and progress. This appears to be something we do not want to confront  – we seem to have accepted this global phenomenon as a new normal despite all the evidence about its profound abnormal and negative impacts. After all, as so many adults are active participants in this global collapse, why throw an embarrassing spotlight on it? And young parents, brought up in the digital age, seem to know no better.

This transformation from the age-old and instinct-driven obligations of parenting to a global surrendering within our societies in the name of technological progress is already having serious impacts on the next generation – the children of the world of whom so much is expected. If they are to deal with the challenges of the 21^st century, they need sound parenting to obtain a sound understanding of what it means to be a member of society. Parents play a key role, and steps must be taken to prevent global parenting from nosediving further as the digital world suffocates it.

Tech evangelists have taken residence in most workplaces where tech seeks to invade every aspect of work, with the ultimate objective being to improve productivity/efficiency by reducing labour costs. But we seem to have raised the white flag at home too. The biggest surrender is that of parents, who are relinquishing the well-being and upbringing of their children to algorithms and the unscrupulous profit-making motives of tech companies and others in the digital ecosystem. A near total collapse has taken place all over the world as the infection spreads unabated and even overtaken classrooms. This is truly unprecedented in human history.

Few parents can keep up with their kids’ tech capabilities, so supervision becomes a notorious challenge, and the tech companies know this. There is even an app named Bark that attempts to address this challenge by analysing messages and alerting parents when their children are suspected of using trigger words to do with drugs, sex, or violence.

However, parents globally and especially in more advanced economies have embraced the notion they should not use this approach, for fear of encroaching on their child’s right to privacy. This is a perversion of the very notion of parenting that has taken root in wealthier liberal societies. After all, how much privacy does a twelve-year-old child need? How much privacy is a minor even entitled to?

The reality is that these ideas are being exported through popular Western culture and are infecting the rest of the world with widespread impact on traditional values and culture. Children feel they have rights without responsibilities and this is having serious repercussions at school leaving teachers feeling they have lost control. More and more children are refusing to even attend school because they feel unwanted or disliked by their peers, teachers or parents.

Societies have set an age restriction on alcohol, other recreational drugs, voting, driving, sex or using a credit card – why not smartphones? These controls are placed on activities society believes to be inappropriate or damaging for minors on the grounds that they are not mature enough to make those decisions for themselves nor to handle the consequences. It is time the argument is made that mobile phones tick that box too and perhaps more so than most of the others given their ubiquitous presence, the ever-increasing power of the technology and their addictive nature.

What is telling is that parents who work in tech seem to know all of this and thus protect their own children from devices. Steve Jobs restricted the amount of time his children spent on devices, and Bill Gates refused to let his children have a smartphone until they were 14.

They’re among many other tech-based leaders who say no to smartphones and screens. Some cut screen time because they’re part of teams that work to make smartphones so addictive; others because they have concerns over interference in their relationships with their children.

A culture shift supported by strong regulation is needed. The policy steps can be simple and impactful.

• Following France’s example, smartphones should be banned in all schools. China has taken the lead in Asia.
• Children below a certain age should not be allowed to purchase their own smartphones. Parents who cheat will be prosecuted just as they would if they bought alcohol or drugs for their kids.
• All phones purchased for children will not allow online purchasing, gambling, access to toxic sites or porn and numerous other restrictions which will be supported by legislation. Given the advances in facial recognition and bio-metrics technology, it would even be possible for parents to only give their children phones which are truly smart and do not allow them access to undesirable material and permit only a minimum amount of screen time.

When I cycle around Melbourne on one of the many cycle-tracks I often see walkers and other cyclists wearing their earphones and presumably listening to music, stories or other people instead of the sounds of Nature – birds, the wind in the trees. We are getting a lot of useful information via the internet – too much, I believe and this comes at the expense of simple human interaction: friendship, camaraderie, even the companionable silence of others enjoying their environment. Fortunately, more people are querying the need of expensive smartphones and looking for phones which do just that, act like a phone to contact others when necessary.