Robert Booth, The Guardian; ‘Social media is like driving with no speed limits’: the US surgeon general fighting for youngsters’ happiness
Ethically-tangled aspects of 21st century societies and cultures. In the vein of Charles Darwin’s 1859 “entangled bank” metaphor—a complex and evolving digital ecosystem of difference and dependence, where humans, technologies, ethics, law, policy, data, and information converge and diverge. Kip Currier, PhD, JD
Thursday, March 21, 2024
‘Social media is like driving with no speed limits’: the US surgeon general fighting for youngsters’ happiness; The Guardian, March 19, 2024
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt – a pocket full of poison; The Guardian, Book Review, March 21, 2024
Sophie McBain, The Guardian, Book Review; The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt – a pocket full of poison
"The American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes this mental health crisis has been driven by the mass adoption of smartphones, along with the advent of social media and addictive online gaming. He calls it “the Great Rewiring of Childhood”.
Children are spending ever less time socialising in person and ever more time glued to their screens, with girls most likely to be sucked into the self-esteem crushing vortex of social media, and boys more likely to become hooked on gaming and porn. Childhood is no longer “play-based”, it’s “phone-based”. Haidt believes that parents have become overprotective in the offline world, delaying the age at which children are deemed safe to play unsupervised or run errands alone, but do too little to protect children from online dangers. We have allowed the young too much freedom to roam the internet, where they are at risk of being bullied and harassed or encountering harmful content, from graphic violence to sites that glorify suicide and self-harm...
The Anxious Generation is nonetheless an urgent and essential read, and it ought to become a foundational text for the growing movement to keep smartphones out of schools, and young children off social media. As well as calling for school phone bans, Haidt argues that governments should legally assert that tech companies have a duty of care to young people, the age of internet adulthood should be raised to 16, and companies forced to institute proper age verification – all eminently sensible and long overdue interventions."
Monday, June 19, 2017
Amazon has a patent to keep you from comparison shopping while you’re in its stores; Washington Post, June 16, 2017
"Amazon was awarded a patent May 30 that could help it choke off a common issue faced by many physical stores: Customers’ use of smartphones to compare prices even as they walk around a shop. The phenomenon, often known as mobile “window shopping,” has contributed to a worrisome decline for traditional retailers.
But Amazon now has the technology to prevent that type of behavior when customers enter any of its physical stores and log onto the WiFi networks there. Titled “Physical Store Online Shopping Control,” Amazon’s patent describes a system that can identify a customer’s Internet traffic and sense when the smartphone user is trying to access a competitor’s website. (Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos is also the owner of The Washington Post.)...
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
With WikiLeaks Claims of C.I.A. Hacking, How Vulnerable Is Your Smartphone?; New York Times, March 7, 2017
With WikiLeaks Claims of C.I.A. Hacking, How Vulnerable Is Your Smartphone?
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Study: The Digital Divide Between Latinos And Whites Is Shrinking; NPR, 7/22/16
"After years of lagging behind other ethnic groups when it comes to accessing the Internet, the "digital divide" between Latinos and whites is now at its narrowest point since 2009. A new study from the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Latino adults who report using the Internet increased from 64 percent to 84 percent between 2009 and 2015, a faster growth rate than that of whites going online in the same period (80 percent to 89 percent). As a result, the gap in Internet use between Latinos and whites shrank from 16 percentage points in 2009 to just 5 points in 2015."
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Don't mourn the loss of libraries – the internet has made them obsolete; The Telegraph, 3/29/16
"The truth, and it is a sad truth for former librarians like myself, is that the public are voting with their feet. Councils are only following the lead of the public with library closures. We can, and should, still love books, but we should not be sentimental about libraries, because they are a means to an end. Access to information is now widely available via smartphones: three quarters of us have one, it was one in five in 2010. Library and information services have to be designed with that reality in mind. The true inequality remains access to books and reading. Children who grow up with and around books do better educationally than those who don’t. That is where childcare, nurseries and schools are the key. Libraries must adapt to the changing habits of adults, where there is a clear and irreversible trajectory there. But they must never abandon children."
Sunday, February 7, 2016
How Limited Internet Access Can Subtract From Kids' Education; NPR, 2/6/16
"Researchers from Rutgers University and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop collected dozens of stories like Uribe's for a new study focused specifically on lower-income families with school-age children. They surveyed nearly 1,200 parents with kids between 6 and 13 years old, whose income is below the national median for families with children. They found that even among the poorest households, nine in 10 families do have some access to the Internet, but in many cases that means dial-up or a mobile data plan. "Our data is one of the first, if not the first time that we can really comprehensively look at whether or not having mobile-only access — meaning that you don't have it through a computer or a desktop — whether or not it's equivalent. And what our findings show is that it is not," says co-author Vikki Katz. The study puts in a new light the important progress that smartphones brought to many disconnected households... And digital equity experts say, the most important thing will be changing the way we think about the issue: no longer the question of if there's access, but what's the quality."
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
The New Digital Divide: Mobile-first design serves all virtual patrons; American Libraries, 1/4/16
"According to a recent Pew Research Center study of smartphone use, for approximately one in five Americans, their mobile device is their primary computing tool. Even for those who have personal computers, many people use their smartphones for progressively more purposes, including seeking health-related information, banking, looking for jobs, and completing coursework. Until recently, mobile library websites were envisioned not as total online library experiences but as quick lookup tools. They often did not contain the full range of services as the regular website but a curated collection of commonly used items, such as a catalog search, hours and directions, an ask-a-librarian feature, and room booking. The assumption was that patrons would use a computer for anything more intensive, such as doing research. If patrons are using mobile devices as their primary computing tools, a website designed for quick lookup will frequently be insufficient... The ways that patrons are using available technologies continue to change rapidly, but focusing first on serving those with the least and most challenging access may help libraries design a better online user experience for all their patrons."