In this adult-
centric
world , there is a lot of talk about prohibiting the use of mobile phones for those under 16 years of age.
Sometimes it is enough to be a mother or father once or twice to furiously defend an ideal prohibition age for an entire generation.
However, parents' use of their children's identity and image on their social networks is rarely censored.
Children can be exposed and exploited (literally and commercially) on the Internet without any social judgment or institutional restraint.
Until now.
Because the first children of the networks begin to have a voice and age to denounce their elders.
It is possible that soon these children will organize to demand a ban on
smartphones
for fathers and mothers.
That's right.
“Sometimes I didn't know where the separation was between what was real and what was selected for social networks.
Being an
influencer
girl turned the relationship with my mother into more of an employer-employee relationship,” confesses Vanesa (not her real name), daughter of an
influencer family who recounts the abuse to which her parents subjected her in a report in
Cosmopolitan
magazine
.
She was exploited in 2010, in the first
influencer boom
.
But, 14 years later, lifestyle accounts, family models, leisure, dance, sports or culture where minors are exhibited continue to bill with impunity.
The brands pay, the mothers and fathers get paid and the minor puts in hours.
Of course,
sharenting
, an anglicism that defines the exposure on the Internet of private aspects of a minor's life, is not an exclusive abuse of
influencers
.
In fact, most of us fathers and mothers who give birth to our children after Facebook have shared essential matters of their lives and intimacy on the internet.
Birthday photos, school work, a foot, their place of residence, the first ultrasound, the book they read, their faces, their bodies... The intention was not bad and the ignorance was great.
The curious thing is that many of these parents are now demanding a ban on cell phones for their children and blaming “technology” for all the evils.
There is no demand for dialogue or intergenerational learning, no digital education or critical thinking is required.
Meeting and co-education spaces are not claimed.
Instead, parents organize themselves in WhatsApp groups to complain about mobile phones.
Deep down, the issue of cell phones and the generation gap is as old as the relationship between freedom and responsibility.
Technology has given us freedom as important as that given to us by democratic systems.
The problem is that the concept of freedom has been becoming politically, socially and intimately separated from the concept of responsibility.
And technology is, without a doubt, the pinnacle of this divorce.
Because each individual has all the power in his hand and, at the same time, does not feel the obligation to be responsible to it.
On the contrary, responsibility is demanded exclusively of others.
In politics and now also in families.
So millions of fathers and mothers who are or have been irresponsible with the use of mobile phones come to demand responsibility from our children.
Movement that will last until they start complaining about us.
I do not see it.
For now, as a measure of reflection, I will turn mine off for vacation.
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