Author: Hamish Curry, General Manager, Cool.org
In 2011, American sociologist Sherry Turkle, published a book titled ‘Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other’. Her accompanying TED Talk ‘Connected, but alone?’ is a good summary of this research that still resonates strongly today. With all that technology can do and can offer, we keep falling into the trap that it will save us somehow. For example, there is the optimistic outlook that AI, in particular, will make our lives more engaging, and more efficient, and give us the illusion of expertise. Since the release of Sherry’s book, our levels of interaction with technology have continued to increase while, as a society, anxiety grows, and relationships with each other and our world take a back seat.
In 2011, thirteen years ago, children would have started their school experience, and now, in 2024, they’re graduating high school. Their worlds have been dominated by technologies that have continued to evolve. The tech has become faster, more intuitive, and more pervasive. Technology has created expectations of how things should function, and this creates assumptions that our young people have as well. Their travel, their food, their entertainment and their communication can be delivered with almost no interaction with other humans. All this time spent alone living your life through devices. Perhaps it is as Sherry Turkle warned, “If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they’re only going to know how to be lonely.” So what should be the role of education in shaping a student’s experience of the world?
People read ‘The Anxious Generation’ (2024) by Jonathan Haidt and suddenly blame tech for all that we assume is wrong with young people and their lives. With AI-driven algorithms reinforcing messages of fear and stereotyping, it’s no wonder more and more schools are implementing phone bans and putting up firewalls to keep the world out. Certainly, tech has invaded parts of many children’s lives to some detriment, but when you look at other studies, such as those conducted by Mission Australia of what’s driving youth anxiety, it’s often related to issues concerning relationships, climate change, disaster resilience, gender inequality, conflict, exams, and financial security. Time spent online may amplify student exposure to these issues, but putting the tech away doesn’t make these problems vanish. It can further feed isolation. Education must be built from the realities of our world or students are at risk of not being able to survive within it.
Our young people need adults to give them strategies to navigate the world with hope. They need to be given opportunities to investigate, interact and experience a world where things are getting better and where they can help make them better. They need to learn to collaborate, compromise, be challenged and realise that choices exist everywhere. This can only happen if we give young people the space and respect to choose what they want and need as well. Guy Claxton’s book ‘What’s the point of school?’ (2008) highlighted these very ingredients as the answer to the book’s question. Yet too many education agendas in 2024 are prioritising knowledge and memorisation over making learning truly memorable. It’s an ambitious goal of learning design to make someone care so deeply that they simply can’t forget; something they take with them in life. However, if learning doesn’t leave the school gates, then schools are already making themselves redundant. This is where we need to expect more from each other.
If there was a moment in a young person’s life that seems to carry so much weight and expectation, coupled with doubt and frustration, it could be every 16-year-old out there. Being 16 seems to be a turning point, when they are still a child but are expected to make choices about their future like an adult. Technology can be a friend and a foe at this time, able to connect a young person to a wealth of information, incredible opportunities and mentorship, but at the same time runs the risks of disconnecting a young person from the real world and fragmenting their reality.
Lots of school programs make a big deal out of unique programs for Year 9 students, but it often evaporates in Year 10. What if Year 10, the 16-year-old experience of learning, built off this Year 9 experience and was grounded almost entirely in the real world? A year of work experience and studies offsite, of pursuing community volunteering and giving to causes that mattered to people and our planet, of learning from very diverse people. Imagine a playful approach to mentorship where the person helping you had to be the addition of half your age. It means 16-year-olds would spend time with 24-year-olds, and 24-year-olds would spend time with 36-year-olds. Just far enough ahead to see what the next phase of your life beyond yours might look like, and all the choices that led to it.
Our relationship with technology seems to be limitless until we realise how it is replacing these genuine connections with people and community. Perhaps it is as Sherry Turkle surmised back in 2011, that eventually, “we begin to feel overwhelmed and depleted by the lives technology makes possible.” Learning from this is more important than not learning about it at all, or worse, pretending it’s not even a problem.
It’s a real set of ‘mirrors, windows, and doors’ options. Do we care about learning about ourselves, others, and what it means to take action? If so, then we need to make learning and the institutions that administer it more connected to different people and our planet. We need to get cracking on more creative connections so that technology isn’t the one that disconnects us.
