My Kids' Brains, & Yours' too

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“Machines designed to change humans.”“We can now create machines that can change what people think and what people do, and the machines can do that autonomously.”

Richard Freed, author of Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age, has written a fascinating article,  "The Tech Industry's War on Kids: How psychology is being used as a weapon against children."    This topic is 'suddenly' all over the news, and it already risks being ignored as yet another thing we are too overwhelmed to actually do anything about.  HOWEVER.

I am more convinced every day that how the next ten years goes with our children and how/when we introduce hand-held addiction devices, masquerading as 'telephones'.... will literally change the course of how we are human. 

These devices have only existed for 10 years, yet we are about to LOSE the imagination and energy of a generation that, according to a recent British report, "...has resulted in the children's hands too weak to hold a pencil to write on paper...."

Freed writes, "My practice as a child and adolescent psychologist is filled with families... say(ing that) their kids’ extreme overuse of phones, video games, and social media is the most difficult parenting issue they face — and, in many cases, is tearing the family apart......What none of these parents understand is that their children’s and teens’ destructive obsession with technology is the predictable consequence of a virtually unrecognized merger between the tech industry and psychology. "

This is everyone’s fight. I have great kids, who were raised with hours of outside time daily, spent years in low-tech Waldorf schools, and yet we are neck deep in THIS. They started sharing a flip phone about ages 8 & 10 for family reasons, and a few years later when it broke, the iPhone was free and the flip phone was $400..... I thought it was a fun treat for my capable, diverse, engaged kids.  And now, we are fighting everybody's fight.

Again from Freed, "If you haven’t heard of persuasive technology, that’s no accident — tech corporations would prefer it to remain in the shadows, as most of us don’t want to be controlled and have a special aversion to kids being manipulated for profit. Persuasive technology (also called persuasive design) works by deliberately creating digital environments that users feel fulfill their basic human drives — to be social or obtain goals — better than real-world alternatives......While persuasion techniques work well on adults, they are particularly effective at influencing the still-maturing child and teen brain."

What is happening to the development of a kid's brain who can't image NOT carrying the phone in their hand, looking at it, listening to it - WHILE they do every single other thing? Walking to the basement for laundry, putting away dishes, going to the bathroom, carrying out the trash, doing homework.... this little mighty machine and I are in a mud-fight for my mid-teen's brain development. We are missing sleep, all of us, in this fight. We are exhausted and mad and shaken, all of us, by this fight.

Ramsay Brown, the founder of Dopamine Labs  says in a KQED Science article (as quoted in Freed's article,) “We have now developed a rigorous technology of the human mind, and that is both exciting and terrifying. We have the ability to twiddle some knobs in a machine learning dashboard we build, and around the world hundreds of thousands of people are going to quietly change their behavior in ways that, unbeknownst to them, feel second-nature but are really by design.” Programmers call this “brain hacking,” as it compels users to spend more time on sites even though they mistakenly believe it’s strictly due to their own conscious choices."

My kids have had advantages of inquisitive educations and imaginative play and quality nutrients and a 1000 other things that honestly, most do not. Yet, we too are stretched to the breaking point in this fight for their future. They demand that phone in their lives, and I am fighting to keep parental authority, and them. Their schools now take for granted they have them, and all manners of their classwork and responsibilities require them.  Consulted professionals are conflicted.  There are complicated reasons why they cannot now just be turned off.

I cannot possibly express adequately to you that no matter how raw the fight gets when your kid wants their first phone - it is NOTHING, not a fraction, of the fight you will have once the bait is set. This is a very real fight, and the other side is not tired, they are not busy, they are not distracted, & they are not kidding.   This is for keeps.

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