Why bother changing things when you can pass another law?
Adapting to a world of omnipresent and permanent communication brings challenges. New forms of communication technologies require new ways of using them. Not that long ago, locating somebody outside work hours was unusual, uncomfortable, and only justified in exceptional circumstances. Now, we all carry a pocket computer that allows us not only to talk on the phone, but to communicate in ways we see as less intrusive, such as email or instant messaging, which changes the game completely.
Which might explain why New York is now pondering whether to follow France’s lead in enshrining the right to disconnect and pass a law banning private companies from asking their workers to be available outside working hours. However, the problem is not so much the existence of email, messaging or phone calls outside working hours, but instead the existence in many companies of a 24/7 culture imposed from above, and thus confusing the symptom with the illness and creating more problems down the road.
France, which seems to be leading the way in introducing measures to “protect” its population against the excesses of new technology, also wants to ban children taking their smartphones to school. Could this be done? Yes: politicians’ capacity to pass meaningless laws is well known, but would it do any good? Would it make sense? The answer, I’m afraid, is no. The idea won some initial support, but the reality is that most French children oppose it, along with their parents and many of their teachers. Turning schools into islands in a connected world where technology is not welcome, instead of adapting them to integrate smartphones into education, is retrograde and means losing a powerful tool that with the right changes to teaching can provide unparalleled access to information. Fighting to prevent technology from shaping education is insane.
In the rest of Europe, the signs are that Facebook, hoping to anticipate the likely problems the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will bring, will change its terms of use to prevent under-16s from using WhatsApp. Does anybody really believe that the hundreds of thousands of teenage users of the messaging service will stop using it? How will the ban be enforced? In the same that in Spain a decade ago the authorities’ attempts to control social network Tuenti, sent use of the social network rocketing in all school patios.
Save us from fast-on-the-draw politicians, please. Laws are easy to pass: it doesn’t take much for a leader to convince a sufficient number of our supposed representatives, who in reality are looking out for their own interests, to support a motion, typically used as a bargaining chip. In practice, such laws are not only toothless, but often create more problems than they set out to solve. If instead of banning work emails or messages after 7 pm, we need to change the hierarchical and authoritarian culture of many companies, which is the real problem.
Likewise, instead of stopping children from taking their smartphones to school, we need to integrate those devices into the educational process and provide WiFi and chargers on their desks. Instead of banning WhatsApp, parents need to understand how to educate their children in the appropriate use of messaging. But why bother, when it’s easier to pass another law?
Meanwhile, as a society, until we embrace technology and its consequences, while we try to stop time, we will get nowhere and the future will continue to unfold, and eventually we will have no choice to adapt… or die.
(En español, aquí)
