The dilemma of today's families

The aim is, through a meme, to explain one of the biggest issues that families are facing nowadays: the fine line between usefulness and addiction to technologies. 

Untitled design

It has been difficult to choose the group but even more so, the image that could better portray this reality that seems to have become a pattern in most of the families. Parents, lost in an ocean of doubts; children, lacking the tools to answer such questions. It is palpable that one of the most vulnerable populations, in terms of media literacy, are children; they have become passive citizens, devoid of references due to the dispersion and abundance of messages, predominance of commercial content created by large media blogs for economic purposes and the lack of reflection involved in the use and incessant interaction with all these contents. Currently, consumption prevails over creativity and intellectual development.

In the same way that families take their children to museums to learn about art or history; just as other languages are acquired or travel is seen as a way of getting to know different ways of life, technological culture, or as the experts call it, digital literacy, must be treated with the same rigor, even more, if possible. Social Media, along with other equivalents, have become the best tool and the worst weapon (double-edged sword). Education includes technology because society includes technology, in the strictest sense of the postdigital (de Laat & Dohn, 2019; Taffel, 2016). The political role that technologies also play in education (Winner, 1980), determine new and complex forms of literacy, shape cultural and thinking models and they significantly impact  the attention of children and youth (Hayes, 2007, 2012).

Of course, we have different criteria when it comes to understanding the physical and the digital, often without recognizing the danger that implies being on the net. Moreover, we are often convinced that younger generations do not need help, that they know enough about it. Families need to take matters into their own hands, to introduce and teach their kids about Social Media in order to educate them. So, as adults, we need to approach technology, because it is part of their lives and their future. We have the opportunity to create new dialogues. Safe Internet surfing is a pending conversation in every home as it is in every classroom (Bortnik, 2016).

 

Laia Balagué i Cabré

Referències bibliogràfiques

Bortnik, S. (2016, octubre). The conversation we’re not having about digital child abuse [Video]. TED TALK.https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_bortnik_the_conversation_we_re_not_having_ab out_digital_child_abuse/up-next?language=en

de Laat, M., & Dohn, N. B. (2019). Is Networked Learning Postdigital Education? Postdigital Science and Education, 1(1), 17-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-019-00034-1

Hayles, N. K (2007). Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes.

Profession (1), 187-199. https://doi.org/10.1632/prof.2007.2007.1.187

Hayles, N. K. (2012). How we think: Digital media and contemproary techogenesis. The University of Chicago Press.

Taffel, S. (2016). Perspectives on the postdigital: Beyond rhetorics of progress and novelty.

Convergence, 22(3), 324-338. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856514567827 Winner, L. (1980). Do Artifacts Have Politics? Daedalus, (1), 121-136.

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