Technology in The Family: Living in a Digital Society

Last week, Slate magazine published this article reacting to an interview given by the American comedian, Louis C.K., in which he talked about why he won’t allow his young children to use smartphones, citing children’s lack of empathy due to the removal of visual cues as one of the reasons for his stance. The article’s author gives their own response, as to whether or not they think that this is a good idea, but as Louis C.K. acknowledges and as Anne Collier wrote in NetFamilyNews, the desire to have such technology is often a social one: all their friends have one.  It’s worth watching the interview with Louis C.K. and reading Anne’s thoughts on it to hear some insights into what is a complex topic with no definitive answers yet.

Facebook has been working on understanding and incorporating social-emotional intelligence into the social network for over three years, holding its Third Annual Compassion Day in January, 2013. One of the findings they reported from research undertaken with scientists from Berkeley and Yale, was that while only 20% of children would complete an empty message box to tell a friend that they didn’t like a photograph that had been posted of them, the figure rose to 60% if children were given the right language. Again, Anne Collier wrote about this back in January and her piece contains a visual of the sort of options the children were given to increase their use of reporting.

In the UK, Ofcom today released its 2013 Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes report. One of the findings was that mobile phone ownership had decreased in the 5 – 15 age group, to 43%, which is down 6% on the 2012 data.  Ofcom reports that the decline was driven by a 10% fall in ownership for children in the 8 – 11 years age group and a smaller 5 percentage point decline for older children aged between 12 to 15. Smartphone ownership has remained stable for both the 8 – 11 (18%) and 12 – 15 (62%) groups, however. You can find the report, and details of past reports, on the United Kingdom’s page, in the Research section, on GRID.

In France, the telecommunications provider, Orange, has joined with partners to create the Digital Society Forum. Combining online discussion, public talks and workshops, as well as panel discussions, the Forum aims to “shed light on significant societal changes driven by digital technologies”.  It aims to achieve this by bringing together a range of sociologists, psychologists, researchers and stakeholders in the digital world in order to consider the impact of digital technologies on every-day life. Some of the content is in English and more is being added on a frequent basis.

The two forums which have been created to date, discuss the Connected Family and relationships through online connections.  In an article in the former, François de Singly (Professor of Sociology at Paris Descartes University) suggests that the goal of having a “happy family” has been replaced of having happy individuals within the collective group. ¹  Another article reports on a study which focused on secondary school-aged children from Paris and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.²  The two groups had access to similar technologies but how they tended to use it for practical purposes differed between the two countries. In the French group, the children used technology to organize social lives and maintain reassuring contact with parents: using SMS, or text, messaging to ask permission for activities and to advise them that they were safe.  In the group of students in Brazil, they used their mobile phones less for messaging parents, since their time away from the home was more likely to be observed by family members and neighbors than their Parisian counterparts.³

The Digital Society Forum contains a wealth of information for anyone interested in digital life in France, and other countries, including additional reading material and source material for all the pieces, although those are in French only at the present time. It also contains links to a number of pieces of research on a broad range of topics, over and above the scope of that which can be found on France’s entry on GRID.

With examples such as this, of industry exploring the effects on society of all the technology to which children are exposed, the European Union’s Digital Agenda and the United Nations Group on the Information Society there are many stakeholders trying to provide answers to some of the questions about how technology affects lives, whilst increasing its adoption around the world.

Sources

¹ http://digital-society-forum.orange.com/en/les-forums/52-la_famille_connectee_ce_que_le_numerique_fait_a_la_famille (last accessed October 3, 2013)
² http://digital-society-forum.orange.com/en/les-forums/37-la_l_longue_amarre_r_des_liens_numeriques_des_ados (last accessed October 3, 2013)
³ http://www.carnetsdegeographes.org/carnets_recherches/rech_03_05_Petry.php (last accessed October 3, 2013)