Disconnected
A delicate conversation about phones and kids
Earlier this week I was on CBC television talking about phone use among youth. The link to the interview is in the NOTES section below. The whole experience was a bit disorienting because I was in my basement, here in Edmonton, and the host was in a studio in Toronto, and I couldn’t see him. It was probably the worst interview I have ever done. Because I could only see myself, and even then, not so well (I had been asked to sit at a certain distance from my laptop) I felt as if I was talking to no one.
My favourite part of the experience was prior to the interview itself, when I had a pre-interview with a CBC producer. My sense was she was younger than the host and so she was very receptive to the idea of parents imposing on their kids greater restrictions on technology use. I can only speculate as to why that might be so. Maybe she’s experienced for herself or seen among her peers the very real consequences of unchecked tech?
Anyway, I am not on board with a meek acceptance of the current situation. Not all that long ago, August 22 to be exact, CBC published an article online that contained this rather extraordinary section:
Rachel Inch, a Grade 8 teacher at Broadview Public School in Ottawa, recently told CBC Radio's All in a Day that cellphones are so pervasive that it's not effective or fair to simply put the onus on teachers. Students get crafty, she added, and try to cheat by handing over fake phones and keeping their real ones in a backpack or hidden in a calculator case.
"I've had my nose broken because I've taken a phone. I've been threatened with death because I took a phone. I've had a parent come back at night banging on the window demanding his property back because his son forgot to pick up his phone," Inch told All in a Day in April right after Ontario announced its new ban to replace one already in place since 2019.
"When you get in the way of the phone, things happen. It's an addiction for a lot of people."
Does it seem—maybe a little bit—that we are not merely talking about just another technological device? Is this phone habit, perhaps, just a little bit pathological?
My aim here, just as I said in the awkward CBC interview, is to start a conversation among parents. It would be a Quixotic task to raise my own children without smartphones if no other parent were into the idea. My kids would be outcasts. I don’t want that. But I also think the status quo is unacceptable. I have no understanding whatsoever of any parent that feels the need to be in constant contact with their child via a smartphone. A dumb phone can serve that purpose just as well and also, um, wouldn’t it be better to teach kids to be independent, especially as they head into adolescence? How many actual “emergencies” requiring immediate response can one family encounter?
Jonathan Haidt’s argument in The Anxious Generation is that we should try to raise children and adolescents as free as possible from the toxic influence of the big tech companies. Mark Zuckerberg and his kind are not our friends.
After the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled against TikTok's owner ByteDance, finding the company's algorithm responsible for serving content that led to the death of a minor, no one can claim that the fight against the power of big tech is a) a waste of time because the threat is insignificant or b) hopeless, because big tech always wins. This important ruling, handed down just last week, is going to send shockwaves through the legal system.
“TikTok, Inc., via its algorithm, recommended and promoted videos posted by third parties to ten-year-old Nylah Anderson on her uniquely curated ‘For You Page.’ One video depicted the ‘Blackout Challenge,’ which encourages viewers to record themselves engaging in acts of self-asphyxiation. After watching the video, Nylah attempted the conduct depicted in the challenge and unintentionally hanged herself.”
NOTES
My interview with CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6499754
“How will the new school cellphone bans actually be enforced?” August 22, CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cell-phone-ban-schools-1.7299207
“Judges Rule Big Tech's Free Ride on Section 230 Is Over,” Matt Stoller, August 29
