My heart sank a little as I read the opinion after opinion heralding news from Australia that a new law, effective immediately, would restrict children and teens from using social media.
We all seem to agree that “kids today” are depressed, anxious, and failing to do so many things we were somehow able to master - with one hand tied behind our backs - by the time we were only half their age.
It’s the clothes they wear … the music … the video games … the movies … the books … the screens … the bullying … the drugs, the sex … are all addictions we can beat with abstinence.
And just as it was our impulse decades ago to keep our kids from ever being alone in the big wide world, we will now seek to keep them sheltered from the World Wide Web.
But as we all wax nostalgic about the lack of freedom to “just be kids,” we should really be focusing more on the “freedom” we have already etched away.
I don’t know a single person who would want to relive their youth.
Sure, they’d like to be able to do some of the things they once took for granted … like eating cheeseburgers, or staying up late on purpose, or sitting on the floor without having to think about whether their knees will enable them to get back to standing.
I don’t know a soul who would ever be happy going back to pay phones or navigating the roadways with a paper map folded into 27 rectangles.
Who would rather we lost?
Nostalgia shouldn’t be the foundation for policies that dictate our future. Nostalgia for our youth - when we had limited experiences with the world and the understanding of a child - is a seductive and effective marketing tool. It also clouds our judgment.
It makes us look for enemies when we are faced with a chaotic present, it helps us isolate a problem or points us to an enemy we can vanquish, and offers the hope of regaining a life we never truly experienced.
My cohorts worried about the threat of nuclear Armageddon and visited the bomb shelter in the school basement once. Our children worried about whether or not a gunman would get through the barricade of chairs their class had piled against the door during one of several random active shooter drills each and every year.
We had space and freedom to explore and to get into scrapes; they had stranger danger and organized, optimized play. We could be free in our neighborhoods and beyond once we got bikes; they could be free in Minecraft unless we insisted they share their passwords.
Is it possible that the chipping away at privacy and freedom in an attempt to secure temporary safety gives us nothing? If they can’t move about, or have privacy and secrets, if they don’t make decisions or get the chance to be independent in thought, aren’t we merely adding to the anxiety?
If we block another channel for independence, are we asking for more deception and despair?
There are a host of studies by the Educational Database Online that examine how constant monitoring can be detrimental to our teens’ development and mental health. It suggests that a rights-based approach to privacy policy is imperative.
It’s not that we shouldn’t demand more from progress and those who power that progress, it’s that we shouldn’t accept anything less than the right to control our own message, no matter what our age.
Parenting has never been easy, nor has growing up.
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