According to a new poll by advocacy group Common Sense Media, 75% of parents believe digital media skills are important for their kids to know, but parents expressed skepticism about the social value of the internet:
From Common Sense Media’s press release:
• 67 percent of parents said they did not think the Web helped teach their kids how to communicate.
• 87 percent of parents said they did not believe the Web helped their kids learn how to work with others.
• Three out of four parents do not believe the Web can teach kids to be responsible in their communities.
These results demonstrate that parents believe digital know-how is necessary but does not lead to better social outcomes (in terms of communication, teamwork, and community). I happen to agree with the parents given the current state of the social internet, but I think there is potential exists to make the internet a facilitator of social engagement.
However, there are major problems that need to be addressed. These problems fall into two categories:
1) The current social internet is simply not as secure and safe as parents would like. Overcoming this is a key challenge and must be met by schools, non-profits, and entrepreneurs. Most current filtering software does not seriously confront the challenges presented by the social internet.
2) The current social internet is not optimally structured for the way children’s brains work. The social internet is heavily dependent upon the user’s brain being able to understand the internet in abstract terms – e.g. social networks as social graphs. Most cognitively developed adults and adolescents do this automatically, so it’s not an issue for them, but children’s minds often understand things in concrete terms – hence they do not automatically understand that the social internet is a mere abstraction of the real world, i.e. a “map” of the real social world, not the “territory” itself. This is why some children find it difficult to interact effectively with the internet (the ide that kids are net savvy is, in fact, a myth).
