Over ten years ago, I wrote an article for the Guardian that argued it was time to slay a sacred cow: that the internet is a force for good. Many advised me against writing it, saying it would be read as the views of a laggard, but it became one of the most-read articles published by the Guardian that year.
One of the oversights of the article was to not stress the link between the internet and the tools that give it oxygen and real power, the most powerful of those addictive tools being the smartphone. At the time, the mobile phone was a poor cousin of the AI-enabled current monster.
A few years after the piece was published, I saw a toddler in a pram at the Hong Kong airport and was astonished that she was playing with a digital gadget as her young parents busied themselves with their own devices. A young couple embarking on that critical journey of life in building a family had become victims of what one can only refer to as the silent global collapse of parenting. And that was even before AI.
This is an epidemic far worse than many we fear. Not a word was exchanged between the three and it wasn’t a common sight at the time. Now, it’s commonplace. 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.
I immediately wrote a piece on the global collapse of parenting due to the rise of the smartphone but could not get it published. I did not push as I also heeded the advice of those who warned me about such an opinion. But I decided to revisit it when two bits of news struck me. The first was that 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. Second, a news report that the Singapore government is going to put in measures on screen time and device use. You know that when the Singapore government decides to act then the problem at hand is real and large.
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 in its brutal simplicity – 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.
It shares many similarities with the denial and inaction on global climate change due to our addiction to cheap energy which drives our mindless consumption. We all know it is happening, but we are not willing to change because we are addicted and cannot imagine a different future: it is too difficult to confront, there are powerful vested interests at play, and the evidence can even be ignored by those who prefer the status quo. But unlike climate change, the kids are not on the streets protesting against this threat. They are the willing addicts who have slowly but surely bullied and neutered their parents and thus have a hand in the dismantling of parental obligations.
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 21st century, they need sound parenting to obtain a robust 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.
The first admission lies in society’s wholly unhealthy relationship with technology and the companies whose business models are built on creating addiction with a view to dominating us all. We now know that for all their innovations and talk about a commitment to human progress, tech companies operate just as any mega-corporation does – by abusing resources, supply chains, and ultimately their customers, to maximise profits. There are few scruples in the game of business and technology. This is why regulations are arising for social media and AI. The overreach of tech demands it.
The business models of tech companies thrive on addiction, and who better to cultivate as a future addict than a child, and what better ally than a parent. So despite all the societal bemoaning of the ethical vacuum left by tech companies, we are sadly lazy and thus unable to imagine a future that sees these companies tamed, to imagine a future that is not tech-enabled, even tech-saved. There is a deep unwillingness by regulators to curb our endless consumption of tech products that drive our internet obsessions. Parents however must act, as they are the last line of defence. Instead, we are unabatedly delivering these devices into the hands of our minors as if it is a human right. Relentless and mindless consumption enabled by the internet is also where the smartphone and climate change converge.
We may not have control of all of this at the workplace where adopting tech fads seem to be almost mandatory, with the fear of missing out resulting in absurd applications. 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 eco-system. 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. This is one tech disruption we do not need.
Obviously, a divide exists somewhere: how do we move from international outcry at the toxicity of tech companies at one end, to giving children products produced by these companies at the other?
The societal, emotional, mental, and even physical concerns about children’s use of mobile phones have persisted for years: reduced attention spans, increased anxiety, stunted problem solving, exposure to inappropriate and even damaging material – the list goes on and is growing. Yet there is no outcry by governments, at least until now. The jury is out on many of these issues (and the same was true of climate change twenty years ago), but it’s undeniable that there is mass apprehension among parenting communities on the effects of the smartphone on children.
After all, 3 hours of television a day for a child has been critiqued the world over as poor parenting, so why is the use of smartphones any different? It remains an abdication of parental responsibility to a device. The issue is that it’s so much harder to supervise. At least with TV, parents still had the remote. Now, with smartphones, children have the remote, the TV, and the antenna, and they can take them in isolation to their rooms to indulge in hours of toxic, dangerous surfing and chatting.
And it is the use of smartphones sans supervision that is the issue. Carrie James, author of Disconnected pointed to the ethical challenges of smartphone usage among children due to lack of monitoring or guidance. How children traverse digital scenarios is often grey. Is it acceptable to plagiarise from Wikipedia and how does one stop students from cheating by using Chat GTP? What about violently berating someone in the comments section of YouTube? This has been termed ‘conscientious connectivity,’ describing the difficulty children have in aligning their digital identity with their analogue identity, which is comprised of social behaviours and responsibilities. And that is not to even mention the ubiquitous access to porn that children today have and which so many parents are in denial about, almost as if they are deliberately ignoring how tech savvy their kids are in overriding lame attempts to prevent access.
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, 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 and a form of narcissism 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, including filial piety. It is a phenomenon that has accompanied and helped spread the silent collapse.
By letting it slide, more harm may have been achieved than good. An overly soft approach to parenting decisions leads to children who believe they are the ‘alpha’ and can make decisions as they please. This is now one of the mega social trends in richer countries and the middle class worldwide, as cultivated precociousness and even downright disrespect for parents and authority is seen as progressive and a “right”. It is modernity gone wrong when we give children too much agency, and the smartphone is the ideal front for it.
Yes, this is an inconvenient observation. It is nebulous and requires reining in big tech companies; admitting that parents are making very bad decisions for their children; and accepting that children have limits on their rights and will not behave as we would like with tools as powerful and subversive as the smartphone. But the fact is, they are minors and younger minors are simply unable to cope with the toxicity that is readily at hand via the mobile device. It is the obligation of parents and society at large to protect them from this assault. This cannot be left as a no-go topic within the established and almost sacred liberal narrative about the role of tech in society.
But this is not an alien conversation to be had. There’s a list of products and services out there that say otherwise. Societies have set an age restriction on alcohol, other recreational drugs, voting, driving, owning a gun, sex, 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 ‘technoference’ in their relationships with their children.
It’s time to face up to the reality that smartphones in their current form act as an access point to the host of websites, apps, even mindsets and behaviours which cause grievous harm to minors. We are seeing tech companies gradually being reined about the content they carry through policy, and the smartphone can be the next regulatory movement. All the pieces are in place. Limited-feature phones have been designed for children; SIM cards can block certain internet sites; service plans that cap daily use; and apps with age-restricted use. There is clearly a market as well as a need. Bold steps need to be taken by regulators: in countries like France, Finland, and China, there is a national ban on phones in schools. And the Netherlands is planning to ban mobile phones in schools starting next year.
A culture shift supported by strong regulation is needed. The policy steps are simple and impactful – here are three examples.
1. Following France’s example, smartphones should be banned in all schools. China has taken the lead in Asia.
2. 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.
3. 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.
All it takes is for regulatory changes to be introduced to spark a new cultural norm, disconnecting the children from their devices, and reconnecting them with their parents and other members of society. This is the only way to force parents to take responsibility for the conscious act of becoming parents in the first place and reverse the current global collapse of parenting.
This article was originally published on Pearls and Irritations.
