The Biggest Crisis
We hear the word “crisis” a lot these days. A phenomenon of our age is that issues are transformed into crises, and many crises are transformed into existential threats. Think about the way we looked at online harms and screen time for children. Just a year or two ago, the rage was the claim that too much time on screens would be damaging to children and would lead to substantial problems in their development and social well-being. And yet, this year, screen time has been not only a permissible thing, but some of the same commentators who were worried about a glut of screen time last year now call for more remote learning for kids. One might cynically say that the difference between an existential threat and something we just happen to disagree with is nothing more than perspective.
The reality, difficult as it may be to accept, is that many of the crises we face are of our own making, and of our own deepening. The detailed research on online harms for children and screen time for children, as a matter fact, would’ve indicated that more screen time doesn’t necessarily translate to harm or bad outcomes for education. It was just a question of how much we knew and how much our fears were based on research. Ironically enough, that’s what leads us to what we consider to be the real crisis right now, which is a crisis of reliability and confidence.
