A Digital Divide in Risk Awareness

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.”

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