Prince Harry Pines For Fictional, Pre-Social Media, Olden Days When Parents Had Full Control Over Their Children
Over the last year especially, there's been a lot of talk about kid safety online and the role (if any) of social media in all of that. It's a complicated topic that requires nuance, not unproven claims of social media being the cause. Getting this wrong is likely to make kids' lives worse, not better. Blaming social media is easy. Doing the actual work of figuring out where the real problems are and how to best respond to them is hard.
Unfortunately, there are many people out there who want to spend their time boosting their own reputations by claiming they're helping kids, without being willing to put in the actual work.
It looks like we may need to add Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, to that list. Prince Harry has a bit of a history of cosplaying as an expert on internet speech, without the actual expertise to back it up. And the latest move strikes me as a very cynical and potentially dangerous approach. Harry and Meghan launched something called The Parents Network," which, in theory, could be a useful set of resources for parents grappling with the challenges of raising kids in a digital era.
For example, it could feature resources from actual experts like former Techdirt podcast guest, Devorah Heitner. She has written multiple books on how to better raise kids in a digital age. Her books mostly focus on better communication between parents and kids, and not treating the internet as something icky. This will only lead kids to try to hide their usage.
And perhaps, over time, Harry and Meghan's effort will get there. The current website provides precious few details. But what it does include seems to suggest the effort is really focused on just demonizing social media. Prince Harry and Meghan gave a big interview about this on CBS News. In the interview, Harry drops a line that is so disconnected from reality that it should turn heads.
Prince Harry said that in the olden days" parents always knew what their children were up to, as long as they were at home.
At least they were safe, right?" he said.
And now, they could be in the next door room on a tablet or on a phone, and can be going down these rabbit holes. And before you know it, within 24 hours, they could be taking their life."
Except... what? No, in the olden days parents did not always know what their children were up to. Yes, perhaps if you were raised in Buckingham Palace, there was always some adult keeping tabs on you, but for most adults today, childhood included an awful lot of time when parents had no idea where you were.
When I was a kid, my parents would know I was at school during school hours, but from the moment school let out until dinner time, they had no idea where I was or what I was doing. It often involved hanging out at friends, or riding bikes far away, or lots of other things that they had no visibility into. Some of it was almost certainly not particularly safe.
Indeed, there was a big study last year in the Journal of Pediatrics that suggested one major cause for the rise in depression and anxiety among teens was not social media. Instead, it was the fact that adults feel the need to hover over their kids at every waking moment, taking away their ability to have spaces where they can just hang out and be kids, not under constant surveillance.
Furthermore, it may come as a surprise to Harry, but back in those days, sometimes kids (tragically) took their own lives in the days before the internet as well. I have mentioned it in the past, but in both high school and college, I had classmates who took their own lives. It was very sad and very tragic. But surveilling them wouldn't have changed things. Getting them actual help and treating the actual problems might have.
It's great that Prince Harry and Meghan want to help families facing trauma. Many useful things can be done. But, kicking it off with such a false claim that kids were magically safe" in this fictional past doesn't help. And could, quite likely, hurt.