I heard it again. The populist theory of social media.
I was drama teaching and seeing social media come in. A lot of what you do as a drama teacher is you to teach kids how to do group improvisational work. So, you give them a stimulus, and you ask them to create performance around the stimulus, whatever the stimulus may be; a painting or an event or a prop for instance. And so you the kids go away, they get 20 minutes and you give them the tools in order to be creative and they put on a performance.
And year upon year I saw the kids become less able to do that because as social media came in and they were more on their phones, they were less able to listen. They were less able to disagree. They were less resilient. And ultimately, they were more focused on self. And when you take all those things in, you're not going to be able to work cohesively as a team.
This theory allows every parent, influencer, media presenter, journalist and politician to be an instant expert on the ills of the younger generation. Thence, nonsensical regulations on U16 social media use. Sadly, it’s rubbish.
This is what the evidence tells us.
Post-war, austerity created a demand for new things, especially gadgets around the house. Women would happily follow the Hoover to create domestic bliss for their husband. Everyone needed a car, for sure. But happy families began to erode.
Capitalism, not able to continue growth through just making things, found that they had to create demand and so the consumer economy was born. But as the list of must-haves expanded, so did the cost. Those pretty aprons needed to be replaced by a ‘working mum’ so that the new trinkets could be afforded. Asia happily built these trinkets for next to nothing.
Everything must come to an end. Eventually, DINKS was sustainable but DI2Ks was a luxury. But still families strived for a comfortable consumer daily routine.
There was a problem. In an extended family or a single-income family, someone is available to talk. In DI2Ks, language opportunities erode.
All our utterances fall into six modes. Interrogative (Where's my socks?), instructional (Get in the car!), informative (I've got soccer this afternoon), narrative (I saw Joan today and she told me all about her accident), conversation (Where did you go today on the school excursion) and argumentation (I’m not wearing those socks. Only nerds wear those socks).
The point about these modes is that, yes, they often overlap, but we are inclined to adopt only one at a time. When we are time poor, the bus is arriving and critical information must be passed on, interrogative, informative and instructional modes dominate. These modes have common characteristics.
First, they a semantically poor. Socks, cars, watches. The register (the variety of words) is narrow. Second, the syntax is poor. Short sentences with simple structures. Third, they rarely require the kind of engagement that stresses the brain.
Dad: We’re going now. (Inf) Can you please get in the car. (Inst) Where are the keys? (Int)
Now, of course, the kid can argue, but this doesn’t get any reinforcement. It draws hostility. Conflict. Reluctance to engage. Reluctance to argue.
On the other hand, narrative, conversation and argumentation all require broad registers, semantic nuance, complex syntax and lots of brain power. We repeat parts of the story because telling a story fluidly is a skill that is rare. In argumentation, we haggle over definitions. In narrative, we visualise people and places.
The research is quite unambiguous. A decline in literacy preceded social media and even computers. We have incrementally lost our ability to tell stories, to argue points and talk to each other and about a topic because there has not been the time.
Parents who deliberately create opportunities for their children to engage in narrative, conversation and argumentation find that, regardless of the child’s schooling or social media influences or the time spent watching a screen, these children will have cognitive development beyond others who don’t have these opportunities.
The social media theory is misdirection to cover the burden we have placed on ourselves in our life and employment. Nothing more. Do not be deceived.