Checks and Balances

This is my first blog on a subject very close to my heart and one I feel very passionate about.

The internet of today is very different from the environment in which I grew up in the 70's and 80's. It feels like we had a series of checks and balances in my day that helped children enjoy their childhood and helped parents be guardians to their offspring, keeping them safe and protecting them from the world at large.

I remember going to the local shop and trying to buy a bottle of cider when I was about 15 for a party at my friends house. The shopkeeper refused and by the time I had walked back home my mum knew and I was in trouble. It seems the checks and balances of society in the 'real' world were working. My mum was a single parent and she welcomed the help that these checks and balances brought. Whilst she didn't find it easy bringing up two 'characterful' boys she always did her very best for us, protected us and kept us safe.

Fast forward 30 years and things are somewhat different. The checks and balances that helped my mum in the past no longer apply, the internet has seen to that. I feel like we have gone from a society that cared and looked after our children to one that is hell-bent on exploiting them, reducing them to digital bookmarks who are to be marketed to by the next big thing. The next big thing that has control so lacking it appears to be deliberate just to get 'eyeballs'. As parents were are trying to cope with technology that is confusing, moving quickly and new stuff popping up quicker than I could eat spacedust from my local sweetshop back in the day. Facebook, Facebook messaging, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, whatsapp and the hideous ask-fm, to name a few. Some you probably won't know about as well, how about WeChat, Vine, FourSquare even Skype.

These services only purpose in life is to get more people hooked. How do they do that? Easy if you bypass the checks and balances, remove a whole raft of protection parents would want and hey presto THE NEXT BIG THING. It's not necessarily their fault after all more people is more marketing revenue, but the landscape for parents is daunting.

So where are those checks and balances? how do we, as parents, protect and keep our children safe? I think we need a fundamentally new approach and in my next blog I'm going to ask for your support to create something that will help parents bring this back to the family and provide something that could change the way we view all this smart new tech

Comments welcome