A mother and daughter’s perspective on digital access
By Ruhaifa Adil – CEO, Toy Chest Pakistan, advocate of a gadget-free childhood and Rumaisa Samir – Generation Z Muslimah teenager
Dear Mom,
I know I’m always asking for a phone, and I know you’re hesitant to give me one. I know we end up fighting when I insist on you getting me one, and I think it’s partly my fault because I am unable to articulate why I want my own device. So I thought I’d write you a letter to tell you why I think having a smartphone is actually a good idea!
I see my friends around me with their phones, sometimes at school or at their homes. If their phone rings or beeps their attention immediately diverts to it, and I sit there awkwardly silent and bored as they fiddle with their phones. Having a smartphone gives my peers something in common. Nobody teases or embarrasses me for not having my own device, but the fact that I don’t own one does make me feel like an outsider. It makes me hesitant around other people my age, strangers or not, when I see a veritable river of them glued to their smartphones. I feel lonely, isolated even, when I see the extent of their connectivity to the people and the world around them. I feel confined and restricted, and that I am missing out. I’d even say that at times I feel insecure around peers and those of my age group.
Having a smartphone will not only increase my confidence and make me feel good about myself, but will also keep me informed about current events and what’s happening in the world around me. Other than that it will also enhance my creativity and get me to take initiatives.
And how do I know that? Well, I see people, in fact some of my own classmates, put their ideas and projects out in the big wide world and receive appreciation for their talents and work. Someone I know has set up their own page on social media, displaying their artwork and craft projects.
And that brings us to one of your chief concerns when it comes to giving me access to a smartphone.
Really, social media is not all bad.
I’ve seen how much stronger the bonds of friendship between my classmates who have phones are, as compared to the bonds between me and them. I’ve seen how it offers them a sense of belonging, and how it makes them more socially adept. It gives my peers increased social awareness and helps them take part in social initiatives. They find out a lot about important issues and people from all over the world, enabling them to give back to society.
It also occurs to me that you may be concerned about the fact that I will have access to the internet with a smartphone. I think you can trust me not to do anything wrong, but you can also install parental protection software to prevent me from accidentally stumbling upon inappropriate material. Also, a phone allows me to get in touch with you in an emergency!
I hope you will reconsider and think about getting me my own device. I promise you I will make the best use of it and not disappoint you.
Your loving daughter
******
My dearest daughter,
I realize it is not easy for you to see what I can see. I have been in this world longer than you have been, seen things you haven’t seen, experienced mistakes you have yet to make. There are hidden dangers to what you ask for that you do not understand. But I will try to put my concerns on paper for you to read and think over.
You may feel that the smartphone offers you better connectivity with your friends, but I’m sure you’ve heard of the adage “Familiarity breeds contempt”. While you think you’re connecting to your friends, you are in reality connecting to an image of them that they are projecting to you out there. You might feel jealous, unhappy at how they have “more”, and in trying to compete, fall in this trap of lying about who you are by making “more” of who you are. I fear that instead of feeling good about yourself, you will feel inadequate and unhappy, Instead of getting a chance to develop into the person you can be, you will be stunted with the opinions of others on who you are and how you must be to be liked and accepted in a world that isn’t even real. I need you to know you are larger than what others can see of you online. I do not think that you will be able to differentiate.
I also fear cyber bullying. With the global effect that the internet has, imagine being bullied while the whole world watches. As much as you feel you will get the independence to connect with your friends, it also leaves you vulnerable to connecting with a host of bad people out there as well, predators who may cause you actual harm. It may seem to you that you are smart enough to know who to trust online, but you’ll be surprised how many smart children get caught up so badly, that they take drastic measures to get out of it,
And do you really need a phone to connect? I know you’d hate for me to say “I grew up in a time when we had no phones”, but we did! And maybe you can get your friends off their phones, and able to make human contact more. The relationships you make in the real world will outlast those you make online.
I do realize that research and information is a definite pro of the internet. But information overload is a big dilemma these days. Knowing too much, with information at your fingertips, for which no hard work is done, is more of a disadvantage than otherwise. Scholars of afore used to scan and skim through tens of hundreds of books and encyclopedias to find one thing and ended up learning so much. Even though you do need the internet to get research about recent events, I think you can do that very easily via the desktop in the living room.
Phones are an addiction and I do not want you to be enslaved to one. I want this time of your life to be vibrant, full of real life experiences, not encounters via the lens of a phone! Make memories, not photo albums; make friends, not cyber contacts; have conversations, not likes and comments
The world is a bad place. The World Wide Web is even worse because it truly is a web- a messy tangle of deception, untrue projection, and unnecessary information.
I trust you, but I do not trust the World Wide Web.
Yours,
Mom
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