Colman Noctor: Looking beyond our children's woke statements and teaching critical thinking

The exchange reminded me of a discussion with my daughter when our puppy first arrived. “Why did we pick Cooper — our golden retriever — from the litter of nine other puppies?” she asked.

When I explained that we liked him because “his coat was the whitest”, she told me I couldn’t say that because it was “racist”. When I was a child in the 1980s, I was unaware of what could be classed as a discriminatory comment, whereas my children seem to be developing a tendency to be somewhat hypersensitive to anything that could be construed as discrimination.

Socially conscious positions

I asked other parents if their children had also reprimanded them for certain comments they had made. I was surprised by how common this seems to be. One mother told me that when she told her 13-year-old daughter she would only get her pocket money after she completed her chores, she was accused of “coercive control”. Like most parents, I want my children to grow up and develop a social conscience but does this flight into altruism suggest there’s an overcorrection or is something else at play?

I don’t believe my children are learning these socially conscious positions from me. While I encourage them to be open-minded, respectful and stand up for anyone being mistreated, I don’t remember discussing the term ‘fat-shaming’ with them. When I asked my eight-year-old son where he had learned the term, he told me “YouTube”. The more curious I became, the more his memory of the details seemed to wane, suggesting he did not want to be quizzed on the content he had been watching.

My children are regular viewers of Kids YouTube, and while I try to watch and observe as much of their content as possible, it is by no means an airtight system. Visitors laugh when they enter my house because my kitchen resembles an internet café from years ago. I have opted for my children to have PCs positioned around the kitchen instead of handheld devices.

The rationale is that I can keep an eye on the content they are viewing or engaging with, and they also learn practical computing skills like typing and mouse
control instead of merely swiping with their fingers. But even with this set-up, it is not possible to control or oversee everything they watch, so some degree of risk is inevitable.

My children mostly seem to watch something about slime or someone doing messy experiments involving exploding cola bottles. On other occasions, they watch YouTubers playing video games and commenting on everything they do. I find these videos particularly annoying and often leave the room while they are on. My youngest son said it was on these YouTuber videos he heard about ‘fat shaming’ and ‘racism’.

I was unaware such topics were discussed on these platforms and would prefer that my children learn about complex concepts from someone a little more informed than a 19-year-old explaining them in the context of a video game.

Influenced by algorithms

It is not just very young children susceptible to confusing or inaccurate information. I was chatting with my 13-year-old son on the anniversary of 9/11, and I asked him what he knew about it. His understanding of those events was heavily influenced by a conspiracy theory account he had seen online and had not questioned its reliability.

Children are learningmore and more from platforms like YouTube and TikTok, which are not required to meet strict editorial guidelines. Primed to push viral content, their powerful algorithms share crowd-pleasing entertainment over reliably sourced news.

According to a 2019 Global Kids Online study, whenever children search for information, watch entertainment, listen to music, or communicate via social media, algorithms highly influence their activity.

Children need to be aware that what is most popular is not the same as what is the most accurate. I see it in third-level students’ academic work, with more and more referencing sources without checking their reliability and where Wikipedia has become a standard ‘go-to’ source.

There are already some measures in place to promote media literacy. In most third-level institutes learning support programmes support students to evaluate the reliability of their academic sources critically. MediaWise, a media literacy resource designed by primary school teachers, is also available to help children make sense of the digital world and develop life-long media literacy skills.

A strong case isto be made for incorporating more media literacy into our children’s lives so they can make more informed choices about the content they view online as they grow up.

We need to expand beyond a yearly internet safety talk from a member of An Garda Síochána in schools and instead incorporate regular sessions on deciphering the difference between reliable news and entertainment. While children may appear impressively adept at navigating the infrastructure of the online world, their ability to distinguish informed evidence from opinionated commentary needs to be supported. In short, they need to be taught to be critical friends of technology.

The emergence of confusing ‘woke’ messages in children points to the growing influence of their online lives. Some may think it is good that children are exposed to these terms at a younger age as it will broaden their worldview. However, the researchers from Safer Kids Online in 2022 suggest that the homogeneous streams of content tailored for users of YouTube can limit children’s worldview rather than expand it. While the internet is the greatest library in the world, the search engine is the librarian who shows you what to see.

I am glad my children are developing social compassion, but I worry that it might be a case of too much too soon. Childhood is about having the freedom to get things wrong. It seems unfair for young children to be bound by woke rules, which most likely they don’t even understand.

• Dr Colman Noctor is a child psychotherapist