Last week, the watchdog group Common Sense Media and
the Center for Humane Technology—a nonprofit formed by several former Facebook
and Google employees—launched a multiyear “Truth about Tech” campaign to increase
awareness of the addictive nature of smartphones and other electronic devices
and of social media.
Beginning with ads targeting 55,000 public schools in
the U.S., the campaign aims to engage educators, parents, kids, legislators,
health officials, and tech manufacturers on the dangers of constant connection.
The aim is not simply to warn but also to encourage changes in behavior and in
how devices are designed and marketed.
Tristan Harris, co-founder of the Center for Humane
Technology and a former design ethicist at Google, told CBS News, “The truth
about what’s happening on the other side of the screen is that this is
happening by design. There’s a whole bunch of techniques that are deliberately
used to keep the auto-play watching on YouTube to keep you watching the next
video, or streaks on Snapchat to keep kids hooked, to feel like they have to
keep this streak going.”
The potential for harm is even greater for minority and
disadvantaged children, who, according to multiple research studies, spend much
more time in front of screens. In addition, a 2012 Pew Research Center survey
found that lower-income parents are less informed about the risks of too much
screen time than their higher-earning counterparts.
Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of Be the Parent, Please: Stop Banning Seesaws and Start Banning Snapchat,
writing in The New York Times, said, “The
real digital divide is not between children who have access to the Internet and
those who don’t. It’s between children whose parents know that they have to restrict
screen time and those whose parents have been sold a bill of goods by schools
and politicians that more screens are a key to success.”
