Digital orphans: Ten risks to growing up online

One hundred years after the Mass Society's glory days, it is now known that media have a significant impact on people's perceptions of reality.

Walter Lippmann in 1922 warned that "we are learning in our minds vast parts of the world we cannot see, touch, smell or hear." A simple, yet revolutionary warning: Most of our knowledge about the outside world comes from what other people tell us.

This thought is important because it demonstrates that our ability to realize our citizenship, at least in liberal democracies, is directly affected by the amount and, more importantly, the quality of information.

Current information disorders include fake news, infodemics, infoxication and hate speech, bubble filters, echo rooms, etc. They are important because they shape the social reality we see and from which we make our decisions. It is imperative to examine the ways people interact with the media in depth.

McLuhan convinced us that "the medium was the message" and we have assumed that the channel conditions the content, on one hand, and the symbiotic manner in which our minds decode it. The container and the content are inseparable.

Giovanni Sartori argued in Homo videns that this is the line Giovanni Sartori used. This remote-controlled society explains how television has changed the way people see the world. Sartori asked what it meant that children today watch television before learning to read.

The question is still relevant twenty-five years after it was asked. It causes vertigo to observe the natural way children interact with screens, even before they learn to walk. This remarkable fact is the basis of the debate between those who believe that the Internet will limit our species (this is Nicholas Carr’s thesis in Superficiales). What does the Internet do with our minds? ); and those who see a human being with capabilities never seen before (this thesis is Jeroen Boschma's and Inez Groen's Einstein Generation: smarter and faster, and more social.

Marc Prensky's classifications of digital immigrants (adults who know the digital language but are unable to recall the analog one) or digital natives (young people born after 1985, for whom digital is their mother language) is a good way to talk about technology interaction.

The digital ecosystem has made it possible to communicate in a new way. This will lead to a gap between the parents and the children that is likely to be the greatest ever. Proper training in new technology use is essential because of this disconnect between parents and their children.

We run the risk of "digital natives" becoming "digital orphans" if there are no adults available to support the young in media socialization, which used to happen naturally at home.

The daily scene of analog generations has been banished by the screen in the hands: the gathering of family members in front of the screen sharing news, series, and entertainment programs. This photo is a stark contrast to the dystopian image that our children and teens project, which consume terabytes upon terabytes without any adult guidance.

This scenario shows us the ten biggest risks facing future generations. We can summarise them and call for our support in media literacy to promote critical thinking.

The information hierarchy is gone. The prescriptive function as an information professional has been dissolved by digital culture, as Byun-Chul Han (philosopher) explains in In the Swarm. Social networks put any message on an intellectual equivalence plane, making it difficult to discern what is significant from what is merely anecdotal.

We don't know what's being said. The renowned democratization of mass communication channels that was previously only available to a small professional group has had an unexpected effect on the anonymity of the issuer. This anonymity is not regulated. We are not able to discern the communicative intent of the sender and gauge its quality.

There is more information than there is information. The exponential growth of information accumulation is causing disinformation. Our knowledge doesn't increase after a certain point due to the collapse of our ability to assimilate information. This is where the minimalist motto "less can be more" applies.

The tyranny and absurdity of shortness. Because of its immediacy, the communicative code for the Internet is also called "Immediacy". This means that facts cannot be dealt with in the context and depth they deserve. We are witnessing a fragmentation or twitterification of the world through sentences of only 280 characters.

Excessive emotionalism. The Internet's monetization has triggered a war for attention. The battle for attention is waged daily by emotional content. This is causing collateral damage as relevant news is less popular than frivolous.

Fake news and misinformation. Spreading hoaxes, misinformation, incomplete information, and out-of-context information can undermine citizens' trust in all information available to them. The danger is not that people believe fake news but that they lose faith in real news. This is why there is the risk of young people becoming more skeptical and losing trust in institutions.

Media sounding boards. The digital user's information diet is based on the content selected by opaque algorithms that are owned by private technology companies. By limiting their exposure to other thoughts and ideas, young people will be less critical if they are exposed to too many social networks.

Polarization and hate speech. Young people will lose the perspective provided by diverse approaches and become more radicalized, which can lead to hate speech and ideological polarization.

Spiral of silence. Culture of cancellation creates topics that are forbidden to discuss. Self-censorship is a loss in freedom and a decline in critical thinking. It's a fear that young people will leave the mainstream.

Dictatorship of the "likes" The development of a person's personality in a culture of acceptance and constant praise is one of the biggest risks for minors. The documentary The Social Dilemma demonstrates how this can have devastating effects on self-esteem.

We are all facing dizzying changes and convulsive times in all walks of our lives. We look forward, like our ancestors 100 years ago, knowing that yesterday's world is disappearing and that something new is coming.

Our society is hyper-connected and hyper-mediated like never before. Media literacy is essential, that is, it promotes critical thinking. Jonathan Haidt explains in The transformation of modern mind that accepting life is conflict and democracy are debate>>. It is important to be prepared.

This article was published in "The Conversation".