Swapping screens for a good book could set your children up for life
Laureate na nÓg Patricia Forde is on a bus tour of schools to urge kids to look to books for guidance instead of online
IRELAND’S laureate for children’s literature has called social media an ‘intrusion’ on childhood and urged young people to look to books for guidance instead of online platforms.
Patricia Forde, who is currently touring schools along the Wild Atlantic Way with other children’s writers and illustrators, said books are ‘a much safer environment’ for children than the online world, even when exploring more adult topics.
Ms Forde, Ireland’s seventh Laureate na nÓg, told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘As writers, we would love if children went looking for that kind of information in books. Even within the realm of fiction, nowadays there’s a book on any topic you can think of – from self-harm to drug abuse.’
The award-winning children’s writer stressed literature has a ‘knack of getting children to both see themselves in the book, but also see others and gain some empathy for what’s going on in their life’.
‘There is a vibe of the circus coming to town’
Ms Forde was speaking after the MoS previously reported how children are pummelled with harmful content on TikTok almost immediately after engaging with the platform.
A similar investigation by RTÉ’s Prime Time this week shed further light on the social media platform’s potentially detrimental effects on the mental health of young teenagers. It detailed how three newly created TikTok accounts set with an age of 13-years-old were shown videos directly referencing self-harm and suicidal thoughts within just 20 minutes.
Ms Forde described the findings as ‘shocking’.
She told the MoS: ‘It’s such an intrusion on childhood, and childhood is a sacred space as far as I’m concerned and should be safe. It seems that our children are in danger of being exposed to this kind of stuff way too soon.’
The Galway writer said the competition books face from the internet was ‘partly why I wanted to do the bus tour’ – a two-week trip along the West coast, stopping at schools and libraries to promote reading and give out 2,000 free books.
‘There is a kind of a vibe of the circus coming to town about it,’ she told the MoS from the customised technicolour bus. ‘For young children we are competing with the internet, even at the younger stage, as well as television, film… so we have to try and bring children back to books.’
Ms Forde said parents ‘have to engage’ with the technology their children are using, by monitoring and limiting what they can access.
‘You can’t just hope that they’re not going to access stuff because they will come across it [thanks to algorithms] whether they want it or not.’
However, she pointed out Irish children are ‘great readers’ – an international study last year ranked us among the top countries for children reading for pleasure.
‘I think it’s something we should be very proud of and that we should protect at all costs,’ she said.
‘A lot of countries are finding that children have been completely taken over by the internet and social media and have abandoned books, and that is not the case in Ireland. When I was in Glenties [in Co. Donegal] during the week I spoke to the principal and he told me that now children are reading books in Irish for pleasure, and that’s a big change. They weren’t doing that when I was in school.’
The Whole Wild World tour, from Malin to Mizen Head, was managed by the ‘fantastic organisation’ Children’s Books Ireland, whose website recommends books ‘for all ages on all topics’.
‘I think that would be a really useful thing for parents to look at,’ Ms Forde added.
The tour was her initiative (she was invited to pitch a project when she became laureate) and involves 36 other writers and illustrators who ‘come in bunches’ during the trip. The idea was to bring artists to remote areas that don’t normally receive such visitors.
‘It was partly because I’m from Galway and I’m aware that a lot of the time it’s not financially viable for a writer to go from, say, Dublin to that little school with nine children [in Glenties].
‘They’d have to stay overnight in a hotel and writers don’t get paid that much for doing events at schools. So I was very keen that we go to visit people who don’t normally see a writer or an illustrator.’
She said they have been enthusiastically received by children so far but admitted: ‘I think anything is preferable to doing maths!
‘Anything is preferable to doing maths’
‘They seem to like the look of us in comparison to what’s on offer. It’s absolutely hilarious. When we arrive, we’re in this huge multicoloured wagon. The other day we pulled up in Creeslough [Co. Donegal] and all these kids are out in the yard waving their bus tickets at us. They’ve bunting up. You hear them before you see them – all the laughter and shouting when they see the bus. So it’s really exciting when we land at a school.’
In the case of the Glenties school with nine children, there were more people getting off the bus than there were pupils.
‘It’s just lovely. We want to feel that you kind of envelop them in all that attention and respect, because they have as much right to see an author or an illustrator as any child in the country does. But so far, a lot of them that we’ve visited have never had an author visit them before.’
The 40-stop tour will conclude at the new Kinsale Library in Cork next Sunday. Ms Forde hopes it will happen again in other more remote parts of Ireland.