Netizenship, not digital parenting

Uriel Quilinguing .

“SOME believe what separates men from animals is our ability to reason. Others say it’s language or romantic love, or opposable thumbs. Living here in this lost world, I’ve come to believe it is more than our biology.” This one is quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a British writer who is known for his detective fiction featuring the character Sherlock Homes.

Indeed, while there are physical attributes, aside from reasoning ability, that distinguish humans from animals, including birds, but they do share something in common in parenting—that of raising and training the young from birth to adulthood. Both humans and animals use enigmatic instincts and intuitions, over and above preconceived notions and real-life parental examples, in rearing of their offsprings. 

Let’s admit it, how parents take care of their kids today are incomparable to the norms of raising a family decades ago because actual situations have inexorably changed through time. For many, gone were the days when family members are physically intact under one roof; interacting and helping each other in day-to-day shared tasks and sharing the fruits of their labor.

Often, young married couples would leave their respective families and establish their own households somewhere and hire the services of babysitter since both of them need to work, thus child-rearing time is sacrificed. Worse, if one of them is either employed somewhere else in the country or even abroad. Even more lamentable is when both are overseas Filipino workers; their kids are left with their family members and their only obligation would be to support them financially.

Pardon me for my ignorance but these type of parents was in mind before attending a “Digital Parenting Seminar” last Wednesday (April 3, 2019) at the Mallberry Suites Business Hotel in Cagayan de Oro which the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) Mindanao Cluster 2 organized.

There were several female single parents who actively participated in the discussions, though they did not reveal the reason why they are in that marital status. It could be by choice or have become widows due to unfortunate events. Their concerns ranged from addiction of their kids to video games, exposure to cyberporn, seeming lack of respect to elders, passive interactions to other kids, and even lack of interests in their studies. 

A 2015 survey estimate which the Philippine Statistics Authority officially released placed the households without a spouse at three million, two million of which were females. If we take the OFWs into consideration, PSA estimate was 2.339 million in 2018. These figures are revealing as to the extent on the number of children left with no proper guidance and role models either for a father or a mother. 

 The first speaker on the topic, “Parenting in the Digital Age” which Emmanuel Computer Learning Institute president Emmanuel Manansala responded to all of these and even shared in his personal experience as a father of two. His is an ideal situation since his spouse is actively engaged in parenting and recommending “limit screening time to one hour in a day” was easier said than done.

Manansala cited a Common Sense Media report which states that 72 percent of children, under the age of eight, have used a mobile phone and that most of them have become addicted to gaming. Once a child is addicted to gaming, he would gradually increase the time of exposure and such could lead to real-life problem of anxiety, depression and worse—suicide.

He said children, who derived happiness from video games, are lonely and they wish to escape from real-life problems. Once a child is deprived of access to video games and he manifests anger, depression and emotional numbness, then this could be an internet addiction disorder.

Freed from debilitating social media gadgets, Manansala urged parents to understand and develop the “happy hormones” or neurotransmitters in their children and these are dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins. 

Two other speakers both from DICT, lectured on the effects of gadgets to children, on what parents must do, the types of cybercrimes, the cybersecurity plan 2022, and laws which their agency is tasked to enforce.

DICT deserves to be commended for organizing the seminar on digital parenting but such should not end there since parenting, in reality, is a life-long process which defies statistics, steps, lectures and even legislations. The agency, however, should limit itself to its knowledge, experience and expertise on information and communication technology and therefore should focus on netizenship.

Responsible netizenship is something that must be integrated into the basic education curriculum, families of OFWs, computer shop operators, ICT personnel in government and private companies, and business process outsourcing firms.  

The subject on parenting may be better handled by agencies and individuals whose specializations are on human behavior, physical and mental health, psychology, gender and sexuality, and perhaps including philosophy and theology. This is so because it involves the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood.

By then, there’s no need for Sherlock Holmes’ loupe to find pieces of evidence to explain errant human behavior either that of a parent or a child.

(Uriel C. Quilinguing is a former editor-in-chief of this paper. He is also a past president of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club.)