The spaces in between
I am the Children and Young People Digital Engagement Manager for the Children’s Commissioner for England. This and other posts are my attempts to work out what that actually means. It is also, hopefully, a way for any passersby to help turn ideas into something that can improve the actual lives of children and young people.
In this post I am thinking about unstructured play spaces, surveillance culture and how to solve a cat problem.
Friendly Pressure
There are many fascinating insights in Prof. Sonia Livingstone and Julian Sefton-Green’s book about teenagers’ every day lives, The Class. The one that is rolling round my head at the moment is: how adept young people become at carving out time and space away from the ever increasing adult surveillance of their lives.
Adult’s intervention in children’s lives can take shape in restrictive and critical forms such as timetables, dress codes and SIMS or it can manifest as ‘friendly pressure’ to join in — extra-curricula classes, weekend activities or family time. In either case, young people’s time and space is orchestrated by adults who define parameters and reward or coerce participation.
It used to be much easier to escape from adult view. The nostalgic image of days spent roaming the wastelands with nothing but our imagination to entertain us may have some truth in it. However, in reality, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ was both a blessing and a potentially dangerous curse for children. Now, children are hardly ever far away from adult gaze — whether we are anymore mindful of them is still very debatable though.
Once the installation of CCTV cameras was headline news. Now, we have created a culture in which we not only accept surveillance but we contribute to it — installing cameras in our own homes and sharing our health, status and location with gusto. Even if you are not quantifying yourself via a fitness app or Pokemon hunting, our ordinary digital lives leave more footprints than we ever left in the woods as children.
In this context, it is probably only natural that parents/carers/teachers — themselves feeling the constant gaze of others upon them — have created a new ‘fear of missing out’ focused on children and young people.
Young people do often gain a great deal from adult structured activities, however, they still seek out and relish more unstructured time and space. These ‘interstitial zones’, in the blind spots of adult surveillance — school corridors, bus stops and phones — offer important opportunities for young people to evolve their identities, form/break group bonds and enact control of their own lives (even if only briefly).
The Cat Problem
As I am seeking ways to support children and young people in sharing their views and ideas with adults this poses a dilemma — how can we connect responsibly without generating surveillance pressure and colonizing those interstitial zones?
If we are to help children and young people get their views heard by the decision makers we need to be there to listen and provide support or resources when requested. However, by asking, we are creating an adult gaze that may change the very thing we are looking to find out. It’s a whole Schrodinger’s cat situation.
This is probably an impossible paradox to resolve, but in trying to get out of the way without hiding and being mindful of our presence whilst still being present — perhaps we may find better ways to communicate — or at least make a better box.
If, as adults, we acknowledge the impact we have on young people, if we are open with them about what we are doing and if we can keep our word, then maybe we can co-create a space to meet.
