True Parental Filters

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

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Cory Doctorow

Author, Little Brother

Craphound Blog







PART 3: TRUE PARENTAL FILTERS

After sharing his struggles with disruptive changes in advertising and data collection, Cory Doctorow then reflected on how that translates to his role as a dad…



“Having a kid who can pilot a tablet and cruise around YouTube (at a very early age) has shown me that what parents worry about, in terms of parental filters, is almost entirely misplaced. 



“When my daughter was pre-literate, after watching Dora the Explorer that I had set up for her on the tablet, she would click on related videos like Dora in Spanish and then French and then Russian and Portuguese... And then clicked on the kind of thing you would expect parental filters to pick up. She found Dora the Explorer with someone shouting curse words over the top of it, pornographic, ultra-violent dialogue. And her reaction was total indifference. She’d simply bring the tablet to me and say ‘Daddy, fix it.’ Never any lasting effect on her from hearing naughty words.



“Then one day she’s watching a four year-old narrating her Barbie collection. ‘This is my Barbie X, and my mommy and daddy gave to me because they love me very much. And this is my Barbie Y…’ It was like a cobra and a mongoose — total fascination! It was the only time I couldn’t get her to give her back the tablet.



“Finally, I was able to explain that we don’t watch adverts in our house. And she said ‘OK.’ But for weeks later she would turn to me and say ‘Daddy, do you remember when I was looking at the tablet, and there were those dolls…Can we go get those dolls?’



“There is no parental filter in existence that filters out Barbie ads. But of all the things that my kid has spuriously seen on the Internet, the only one that has caused friction around our household and has warper her mind, is the Barbie ad.



“When we talk about parental filters, we’re not talking about the things that cause problems for adults.”

FOR MORE: See his video below




Let's Disrupt This!

Doctorow’s points, expanded for all of us for all things: 1. Good parental will always matter. Technology will never substitute for passing on one’s moral compass to the next generation. 2. Critical thinking will always matter, at every age. 



Every day is a constant challenge about what to filter out and what to focus on. And the best tools for that is not technology, but our mind and our values and our experiences.  



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