Wow, “danger”, “perils” to children, “help – before it’s too late”. What a scary Times headline! I am already shaking with fear before I’ve read it. Won’t anyone think of the children, and so on?<\/p>\n
What is this scary thing? Of course, it’s the internet.<\/a> <\/p>\n Mind the gap: The perils of failing to keep pace with your child online<\/strong> Hmm. This is to mark the launch of a campaign, a “grassroots campaign” no less. (There’s a beautiful phrase in US politics for a campaign that pretends to be a genuine upsurge of democratic will but actually, well, isn’t. Oh yes, the word is “Astroturf”) <\/p>\n The campaign seems to involve asking kids if they can use any tech and getting very afraid when they say yes..<\/p>\n The campaign\u2019s catalyst is Byron, known for her television programmes The House of Tiny Tearaways<\/strong> and Am I Normal?<\/strong>, as well as the author of the government-backed 2008 Byron Review Safer Children in a Digital World<\/strong>, which resulted in the creation of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, a tv child psychologist heads it. Hmm, why am I less than convinced by this whole thing? A tv child psychologist who also writes for the Times. And gets written about in the Times. Because, she’s also in the news today. (In the Times<\/a>):<\/p>\n Ministers need to act swiftly on child safety, warns adviser<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s Tanya, now known as “Gordon Brown’s adviser.” <\/p>\n Well who else could the government call on? Obviously, no amount of experience or qualifications or all-round peer-reviewed respect gained by any other child psychologist, or by any person who actually knows anything about the internet, could stand up against the fact that she’s got tv programmes. <\/p>\n (If you ever doubted that senior politicians are in thrall to the cult of celebrity at least as much as the people who read Heat (etc) magazines, Tanya is the living proof of your naivete.)<\/p>\n The busy Tanya is panicking about the UK not implementing some European directive on games classification. Or all of her recommendations<\/a>, really. So she’s going from school to school asking questions, to support the idea that kids may know things about using the internet that their parents don’t. And that this is somehow inherently terrifying….<\/p>\n The games classification thing is typical of the kneejerk reactions of this “grassroots” campaign. For a start, it’s inherently counter-productive, in terms of their supposed goals. Would anything make a game more attractive to an early teenager than an 18 certificate? <\/p>\n Is there any evidence that playing pc or console games that are “too old for them” harms kids? Any evidence at all?<\/p>\n Is there any evidence whatsoever that parents are all in a strange population subgroup that failed to notice anything that happened over the last twenty years? Like the arrival of the Internet. How many adults do you know who don’t use computers or the net?<\/p>\n There’s a more internet and computer nonsense on the BBC today<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tech addiction ‘harms learning’<\/strong> The study – Techno Addicts: Young Person Addiction to Technology <\/strong>– was carried out by researchers at Cranfield School of Management, Northampton Business School and academic consultancy AJM Associates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nA dangerous gap has emerged between web-savvy kids and parents. Professor Tanya Byron has launched a new campaign to help \u2014 before it\u2019s too late<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nTechnology addiction among young people is having a disruptive effect on their learning, researchers have warned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n