(22) Tue Dec 13

How does the internet affect parenting?

BEFORE CLASS

1. Write

2. Link

3. Watch

4. Read

1

As technology becomes ubiquitous in our lives, American parents are becoming more, not less, wary of what it might be doing to their children. Technological competence and sophistication have not, for parents, translated into comfort and ease. They have merely created yet another sphere that parents feel they have to navigate in exactly the right way. On the one hand, parents want their children to swim expertly in the digital stream that they will have to navigate all their lives; on the other hand, they fear that too much digital media, too early, will sink them. Parents end up treating tablets like precision surgical instruments, gadgets that might perform miracles for their child’s IQ and help him win some nifty robotics competition — but only if they are used just so. Otherwise, their child could end up one of those sad, pale creatures who can’t make eye contact and has an avatar for a girlfriend. Source: Hannah Rosin, The Atlantic (2013)

2

Educationally, video games are derided as a supreme waste of time and a detriment to literacy, sucking up teenagers’ hours that could be devoted to reading or presumably more productive hobbies. As former Wired editor Chris Anderson once semi-joked to me, “My kids would rather play games than breathe.” Helping students learn to moderate how much they play ought to be a crucial piece of teaching and parenting. Source: Clive Thompson, Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better (2014)

3

In the evening, when sensibilities such as these come together, they are likely to form what have been called “post-familial families.” Their members are alone together, each in their own rooms, each on a networked computer or mobile device. We go online because we are busy but end up spending more time with technology and less with each other. We defend connectivity as a way to be close, even as we effectively hide from each other. At the limit, we will settle for the inanimate, if that’s what it takes. Source: Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011)

4

One high school senior recalls a time when his father used to sit next to him on the couch, reading. “He read for pleasure and didn’t mind being interrupted.” But when his father, a doctor, switched from books to his smartphone, things became less clear: “He could be playing a game or looking at a patient record, and you would never know…. He is in that same zone.” It takes work to bring his father out of that zone. When he emerges, he needs time to refocus. “You might ask him a question and he’ll say, ‘Yeah, one second.’ And then he’ll finish typing his e- mail or whatever, he’ll log off whatever, and he’ll say, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry, what did you say?’” It is commonplace to hear children, from the age of eight through the teen years, describe the frustration of trying to get the attention of their multitasking parents. Now, these same children are insecure about having each other’s attention. Source: Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011)

5

Some parents, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt speculates, may give their kids unusual or, alternatively, common names, depending on how they want them to show up in Internet search results — essentially practicing search-engine optimization, known in industry circles as SEO, from birth. Source: Jacob Silverman, Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection (2015)

6

Recently Fischer-Price introduced a potty-training seat complete with an iPad holder, 12 presumably to complement an infant lifestyle where the recliner in which the baby may spend many hours is also dominated by a screen. Source: Susan Greenfield, Mind Change: How Digital Technologies are Leaving Their Mark on Our Brains (2015)

DURING CLASS:

1. Current events

• Discussion leader: Robert

2. Lesson work

• Assigned reading/video discussion leader: A
• Online discussion leader: B
• Links library discussion leader: C

3. Digerati: danah boyd

• Activity leader: D

danah boyd is an academic whose research examines the intersection between technology and society. Her past research has focused on how young people use social media as part of their everyday practices. More recently, she has fovused on the social and cultural dimensions of the “big data” phenomenon, with an eye to issues like privacy and publicity, data(mis)interpretation, and the civil rights implications of data analytics. This is core to the mandate of Data & Society, a research institute that she founded in 2013 and currently run. danah is the author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (2014)

In-class reading (click here for a copy) excerpted from: danah boyd, “Participating in the Always On Lifestyle” (2012)

In-class video: Kids and parents have different ideas of what’s “private” these days. danah boyd, a researcher and essayist on teen media culture, illuminates what kids are thinking. (2:01)

4. Preview

Preview homework for class 23: Thu Dec 15

• Homework
• Classroom leadership assignments