Growing up Digital, Wired for Distraction

At every parent-teacher meeting we ever attended between 1996 - 2010, a huge pre-occupation was TV and the Internet. The elephant in the room those days, was sex and pornography. Have Internet, will surf porn - was the general (perhaps unfounded) anxiety of parent and teacher alike. One school went so far as as to disable Facebook and blog access from the school server. Suffice it to say that the students were expert little hackers and  found a way to access Facebook despite the block.

To provide a student response and allay adult fears, we organized a Children's Forum on the Internet & New Media at Rangashankara in 2009. Our partners, Centre for Internet & Society and IT for Change, helped to facilitate a debate among the children on New Media and then put together a presentation, using SMS, Podcasts and Youtube, to which adult care-givers - both teachers and parents - were invited. The dialogue between the children and the adults in the audience was a revelation. While the students spoke articulately about safety, technology and being savvy with Internet usage, the adults stuck to their guns about monitoring. It was pretty clear that the issue in question was the same old one - trust, or the lack, thereof. 

Now there's a new elephant in the room vis-a-vis New Media - short attention spans. Sex now seems as wholesome as pie, innit?! Read on...

                                           Growing up Digital, Wired for Distraction