Let’s Deal with Digital Social Experiences for Kids Already.
The below linked video prompted me to respond. As a parent of a young child, it is a topic that hits deep. I think I might have “the” (or at least “a”) solution for this. Hear me out and tell me what you think but know that it is not a fast solution, which is also something we probably need.
Having recently exited public education after the opportunity to conduct my class in a Virbela classroom, I have a ton of experience and thoughts on the use of metaverse solutions with helpful-to-humanity applications. I believe the metaverse (as a concept, not the Facebook branded “Metaverse”) is worth realizing the potential of, but we do need to sort ourselves out about how we use it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the sorts of negative experiences in this video are not new; they’re just becoming mainstream. When both my wife and I were kids (in the 90s) we had 486 PCs with AOL & Juno dialup connections. We also had Duke Nukem with ALL of the cheats. Between illicit content and shady chat rooms we pretty much had the same level of exposure to potential bad actors and things a child’s mine can’t “unsee”, as the video puts it. I’m not saying we were just fine, or that everything was okay in the end. Crazy unfortunate situations did occur that bled to the “real” world. Stuff I hope my child never has to deal with (and to this day our own parents are still ignorant of).
For all of the positive promises of the metaverse, the backside is that nearly every kid in the modern world is going to have to navigate the things that we did; likely with parents who are close to as ignorant on the topic as our own parents were.
So, what’s the solution? I suggest (as I have for a while now) that “digital citizenship” as well as “digital literacy” become mainstream core parts of public elementary school education. Possibly starting around 3rd or 4th grade (maybe sooner?). Right now, the Internet is largely an undefined social experience where everyone’s brain-flow (at times the worst of it) is given life. What if we socially engineered the same behaviors toward all electronic communication that we do toward “real” life. That is, we bring digital life into a component of real-life living; to the point where I no longer feel the need to quote the word “real” or “virtual” when differentiating between the two.
I’m not saying we all live with our heads in a headset our whole life, just that when we put one on, we feel the same responsibility there that we do when it’s off and we’re in a public space. If we could achieve this level of oneness with our digital interactions, then we would understand how to raise our kids in an age that includes something such as the “metaverse”.
That’s where the big-time sync comes in. It would likely take a generation, maybe two, in order to achieve a healthy normalization of “real” and “virtual” experiences. It takes the vast majority of parents understanding and productively engaging with digital life to naturally raise their kids with this technology.
If we want to make the normalization of positive healthy digital life happen any faster, we need to get on with making it an active part of the elementary experience in our society and just maybe, our kids will get this right. Here’s hoping!
As for my daughter, we actively control her accounts, and she has no social media. Her iPad messages only register with family and friends that we authorized with a thumbprint; so, until she figures out how to place her iPad fingerprint sensor under my thumb while I’m asleep, we’re doing pretty good. However, at some point we have to start addressing online social life with her. I’m still formatting my strategy for that. I’m thinking I will probably make her first socially connected device a Linux desktop (none of those user-friendly Ubuntu distros either). My kid’s going to have to learn to navigate in a shell if she wants to get anywhere. (Insert maniacal laughter here).