Why we need engaging children’s books to help kids navigate the online world – and counter harmful attitudes offline…
The digital revolution/mobile phone has put many perennial problems of growing up on steroids – while creating others which are entirely new. The online world is a poorly regulated space filled with manipulated images and extreme behaviours, designed to catch the attention. It can incite violence and/or be highly sexualised, and often reinforces harmful stereotypes for both genders.
Many of the problems – sexual harassment, sharing nudes, porn – are topics which adults are understandably reluctant to raise with children, but this is leaving our kids unprotected when they most need help. Girls are obviously at risk – but boys need support too. A boy growing-up trying to embody abusive, unattainable ‘alpha/sigma masculinity’ is also a victim, and educating kids to hold their own values – and critically evaluate material online – protects everyone.
Children and young people have told us they need help before being given a mobile phone (or ‘digitally coming of age’) and that we should not ‘let taboos build’, but parents/carers face the dual problems of comprehending the technology and overcoming their own inhibitions – and starting this particular conversation is very hard, especially for those who aren’t natural communicators. Charities and the Children’s Commissioner offer advice, but stories are one of the oldest and best methods we have of starting dialogues and sharing life lessons, and writers (and publishers) also need to grasp the nettle.
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/
A 21st Century Digital Coming of Age Trilogy
Transiting from Primary to Secondary school was always a BIG change, but today, with a smartphone included, it’s the beginning of a new ‘21st Century Digital Coming of Age’… then, a year later, kids are legally able to use ‘Social Media’ – and all our digital world (good and bad) is open to them. Young people are telling us (emphatically) that we need to prepare children for this time in advance…
‘When Your Smartphone Doesn’t Know The Answer’ is the first in a series of three books following a group of kids through this momentous period. Told in ‘modern epistolary form’, as texts, mobile blogs and documents (think a younger, more ‘woke’, 21st century ‘Adrian Mole’) and described by one agent as “addictively readable”, the books take a wry and warm-hearted look at growing up in the 21st Century.
Beginning with one child, acquiring her first mobile (now almost a rite of passage) the books use a ‘soap-opera’-structure, expanding to follow a large cast through small stories of contemporary life… frenemies and football, vegetarians and vintage clothes, nose-studs and the Climate Crisis… but woven into the stories are a range of comments, small insights, and bigger incidents, raising awareness of online safety, including subjects such as sexual harassment, the risks of sharing intimate images, and the allure of inappropriate content. These issues are treated in an age-appropriate way, focusing on the characters’ reactions with no explicit detail – actively creating that all important, non-judgmental space for discussion – and empowering kids to talk – and get help – when things go wrong, and even your smartphone doesn’t know the answer.