You can’t beat today’s digital kids — so just join them
There’s no point in wishing for the good old days of sandpits and finger painting. The internet is the new kiddies’ playground, and parents must adapt, writes Zoe Brennan
WE are on our muchanticipated family holiday. The sun is shining, the pool is glistening — and my children are nowhere to be seen. They are all inside, in different rooms, on different devices. It is preternaturally quiet.
I have a sense that the four of them, aged one to 14, have perhaps had enough screen time, and that I should know exactly what they are up to.
In fact, the toddler is watching nursery rhymes on YouTube, the 14-year-old is on Facebook and the 12-year-old is playing on an iPad. My 13-year-old stepson is glued to the small screen of his phone, his brow anxiously creased in concentration, like some business mogul monitoring the markets.
Of course, I will get them off the screens and back to more wholesome activities like football, reading or even just a chat, but for now, their internet addiction is delivering a blissful half-hour of calm in an otherwise chaotic household.
I do worry about what they are doing. One day I will update the parental controls on the laptop to stop them accessing forbidden material (when I find out how). But I am weak: Call of Duty, a violent PlayStation war game, has been allowed into the house after months of debate, because “all my friends have it” — and who wants to make their child a social outcast?
It is something of a relief to find that, according to new research by academics at leading universities, I am a typical parent.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Sheffield and the London School of Economics joined academics from six other countries to contribute to a European Commission study looking at the behaviour of kids under eight on the internet.
Key findings are that, in the UK, parents’ strategies for managing children’s internet use were, at best, “patchy, tending to rely on ad hoc observation”.
And with particular resonance for me, it found that parents have little knowledge of their children’s actual digital use, despite their concerns.
Researchers also reported that children were frequently able to bypass safety settings, and had often covertly acquired their parents’ passwords.
The Finns are much more organised at controlling their children’s online activities, and give them more freedom. Some communities actually have “neighbourhood” rules, where neighbours co-ordinate on rules and time limits for internet use. My husband and I can’t even agree on household rules.
Sonia Livingstone, professor in media and communications at the London School of Economics and an author of the report, said young children in the UK were watching a lot of YouTube, “which can be a bit random, a lot of CBeebies, which is all right, and lots of commercial output, like dress-up doll games, where little girls with wasp waists put on sparkly dresses, some of which is rather dubious.
“We tend to give the child a tablet or a phone for a bit of peace and quiet, then worry that they are accessing violence; and we are obsessed with ‘stranger danger’ and our teenagers interacting with dodgy people.
“We don’t know what’s problematic, and what’s good.”
And we are right to be concerned. She highlights the innocuous-sounding Happy Wheels game, in which players suffer gruesome accidents. “It’s quite nasty, violent and gory,” she says. “Yet I’ve seen six-year- olds playing it.”
It is Livingstone’s view that Nordic parents have discovered the holy grail of digital parenting — monitoring and guiding use by using the web alongside their children, and giving them much more freedom to be creative online.
“It creates resilient children who want to explore and find out about the world. It is part of the culture there. Children are given a sense of freedom to explore the forest, which now extends into the digital sphere.”
In theory it sounds good, but I suspect that giving my children unfettered freedom would just unleash a tidal wave of mindless YouTube clips and online games, rather than creating free-spirited digi-nymphs darting between intellectually stimulating sites.
So what else can I do? Livingstone recommends better home/school communication, so that parents know what educational apps are available and can work with their children at home. In this way, digital technology is seen as an educational asset, not just another entertainment gadget. She also wants to see innovative, engaging apps for younger children, produced by museums and galleries. “If these exist, they are not reaching kids — and if they don’t exist, they should.”
Most importantly, we should set aside an hour a week to do something fun on the internet with our kids. Livingstone said: “Get into their world. Have one point in the week where you all just have fun on the internet.” This I might just be able to do. — © The Daily Telegraph, London
We tend to give the child a tablet or a phone for a bit of peace and quiet