Nelson Mandela’s quote “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children” gives me pause to wonder what he might say about our tech obsessed, screen addicted society today. Who is looking out for today’s child? Who is making sure that our tech obsessed children are safe, that they are getting what they need to grow and succeed? Who is putting in place laws and rules to protect children from the internet and AI? I know some of these people, and am one myself, but I need to state that as a group we do not feel that we are being heard. The technology industry has managed to structure a society without moral principles or “soul”, which is actively harming children for profit. Unregulated since it’s origin, the technology industry has been operating with no code of conduct for designers, no rules or laws, and has been acting in an immoral and corrupt manner that serves only themselves. There are no research studies, short or long-term, that show digital devices that access the internet are safe for children, there are only studies showing harm. Yet we continue to allow unregulated, unsupervised access, not only in homes, but also in schools. Children accessing the Internet is one big experiment of epic proportion where we can only guess at the outcomes. It’s like the whole universe has boarded “The Technology Train” which is barrelling off into the future completely out of control. As more and more children fall off, unnoticed, society carries on with reckless abandon at breakneck speed. Apparently, we’ve learned nothing from the social media, Video Games, Pornand Edtech Experiments, nothing. Now we are moving onto the big wild west frontier with the potentially hazardous AI Experiment where we continue to enlist unsuspecting and vulnerable children as subjects…without their consent. So many studies demonstrate the internet harms children and only a handful of industry driven studies show positive benefits, yet society continues on this path toward imminent destruction of everything that is near and dear to our kids. Shouldn’t this be illegal? Where are the parents, teachers, clinicians and governments who’s job it is to protect children? Where did they go, and how can we engage them to come back? We need to regroup and gather together to fight this monstrous peril that is attacking and destroying our children, the technology industry. Read on.
The education system embarked on the Edtech Experiment in the early 2000’s. I was working as a pediatric occupational therapist for SD 46 and was part of a team who applied to Special Education Technology (SETBC) for laptops for children with special needs. Each school had a computer lab with 30 desktop computers with ethernet plug-in to access the internet. Each classroom allowed 30 min. per week access to the computer lab, and the teacher had a computer from which she could see all student’s screens. With the demise in teaching and human contact, and the rise in access to violent video games (in homes and at school), problematic behaviours escalated. Classroom management initiatives resulted in whole classrooms watching endless “educational” movies during class and cartoons during recess and lunch. The technology industry saw educational technology (edtech) as a golden opportunity to cash in, and quickly infiltrated schools with “must have” edtech designed by unqualified people with no valid efficacy studies. While there were programs that professed educational content, I frequently found students foregoing educational content to play violent video games (wouldn’t you)? This “edtech” was touted by the industry to address academic decline, problematic behaviour issues and student inequities all having their origins with…you got it…technology! Schools (guided by the lucrative, “bells and whistles” innovative edtech industry) quickly decided that everyone needed their own computer, so along came the deals with schools for mass distribution of laptops, smartboards, tablets and soon thereafter cell phones…devices which are all imbedded with data gathering and ads, can access the internet, and are impossible for teachers to supervise. While many schools state they have filters for harmful or inappropriate content, students report they either use their own VPN on their cell phone, or just google “how to bypass _____ filter” on their school issued laptop for a work around.
Unfortunately, plummeting grades and escalating mental illness and physical health disorders including sedentary and unfit, 1 in 3 developmentally delayed, 1 in 3 obese or overweight and 1 in 4 sleep deprived are growing and largely undetected by school staff, leaving parents to fight the fight to get digital devices banned from schools. Despite the existing devastation caused by edtech, as well as proliferation of unsupervised entertainment based digital content including video games, porn, social media, cyberbullying, predation, etc., the education system starts to ramp up use of ineffective, harmful, and illegal AI. It’s not just the technology industry that is effectively wiping out childhood as we knew it, the pharmaceutical industry is just as bad. Without any studies showing long or short-term safety, the pharmaceutical industry (in an effort to address problematic child behaviors), continues to promote and advertise adult psychotropic medications for children. Stimulants, antidepressants, anti-anxiety, sedatives, and antipsychotic medications are being prescribed by physicians for very young children at an alarming rate.
Society needs to find it’s “soul” again and begin the long process of disentangling itself from technology and pharmaceutical industry corporate giants and start to act in the best interests of children. Creating internet safety for children requires 7 sectors depicted by below graphic to come together to create sustainable futures for all children. We can do this.
