Beverly Clarke MBE has had a distinguished career in in IT and teaching, including as the National Community manager for the British Computer Society’s Computing at School Programme. She is also a published author, founder of charity, Technology Books for Children, and a trustee at Archives of IT. Here she gives her views on mobile technology and apps as part of AIT’s feature: Smartphones and social media: transformational technology or dangerous digital overlords.
Fantastic invention
My view on mobile phones in general is that they are a fantastic invention. We are able to carry so much power around in our pockets and to do everything such as communications, banking, booking holidays, navigating transportation systems and more all in the palm of our hands and in our pocket! So that is great in its progress! However, I’m concerned that as apps become more and more powerful, I require greater processing power and therefore more up-to-date phones; this inevitably creates a growing digital divide and digital exclusion unless you can afford the latest device.
Education around usage
I am not for banning mobile phones in schools. However, I do understand the pressures faced by teachers and it’s something that I have experienced while teaching. There needs to be education around usage. There are times in lessons when using phones would be helpful to give students that real world view. Maybe we need to have banks of phones in schools which are used to demonstrate the capabilities of technology and it’s something that I would champion. However, what we don’t want is children on social media networks contacting each other during school time and leading onto issues such as online bullying, or parents contacting children in school, mid lesson, when they should be doing school work.
Constant notifications
There is also the issue that pupils with phones in schools are likely to be receiving constant notifications and this interrupts the whole purpose of being at school – which is the business of learning – instead of interacting with and being interrupted by things like notifications. So it’s a very tricky area to balance. In a perfect world, we would be able to educate positively without banning.
“These devices in part fuel the social media revolution because you are able to go live and to stream. It’s made us more connected but also a bit more disconnected. You just have to look at the comment section on any social media post, it’s alarming people don’t actually read articles, they might comment on pictures without reading the article or instead just comment on what someone else has written. So there is a lack of fact checking going on and a lack of critical thinking. It’s much easier for disinformation to happen and misinformation to continue.
Lack of privacy
As you may have seen on my podcast Tech Journey Insights, one of our guests was a parenting expert and another recent guest was also a parent. They are reporting that their children are on Snapchat and no longer on apps like WhatsApp. They have been talking about Snapchat and issues such as snap maps and how these apps have a lack of privacy. The apps are also leading to over-connection which has its drawbacks.
Secondary school ideal age for mobile phones for children
Personally I gave mobile phones to my children as they entered secondary school in order to connect with them and also for them to be able to contact me, especially when they were travelling to and from school as there is a lot of danger around. I spent a lot of time, talking about appropriate mobile phone usage. I certainly didn’t get it right on many occasions, but that is parenting! I would say the ideal age for a child to have a mobile phone is probably going to secondary school but there needs to be a lot of open communication and for parents to know what is on that phone at all times. Parents need to have open dialogue and to be vigilant.
Mental health crisis
I’ve mentioned constant notifications being a problem. This is contributing to the mental health crisis. Additionally, there is increased screen time which is also causing physical and mental issues such as dry eyes, mental exhaustion, lack of communication between people and lack of empathy.
We need more education and advertising around excess usage
I do feel that social media companies and mobile phone providers need to do more around educating. We need to see more television adverts and advertising around things such as: ‘have you checked your usage lately?’ ‘Do you know someone who’s over using their device?’. We need this to be in much the same way as we know about the negative effects of excessive alcohol or tobacco smoking or eating junk food. It should be viewed in a similar vein.
Regulation
It is not too late to regulate. However, we are in a fast moving landscape and as we regulate, things move on very quickly. So I think education is at the root of this. I frequently use the phrase ‘to develop questioning citizens’ we must be able to look at anything and to consider what is actually happening. I am not sure how effective Instagram teen accounts are because after all many teens want to act and be a bit bigger than they actually are, so it’s a bit like here is the baby version of the real thing.
I think this does come down to social media and mobile phone companies, then parenting first and foremost and parental education, before we get to the school systems. Parents have to take a very active role in the in their children’s digital lives, in much the same way that they would check on their child’s dental health or if they had a cough.
Becoming digitally literate
Everyone needs to become digitally literate and to understand what new updates are bringing every time a device or app is updated. For example, we have AI appearing on our phones in WhatsApp. The AI symbol just appeared, and many people don’t know what it truly fully does and just click it.
Where is the education material around this? It does, I believe, start with the social media and mobile phone companies and the people making and deploying the tech. Then it falls to the consumer and as we’re speaking about children, it is the parents that are purchasing so parents need to be fully aware of what is going on.
So from that point of view, maybe we need a national campaign around artificial intelligence and then it comes into the education system because schools are actually dealing with the societal effects and impacts.