If you like big thoughts, you might like this blog. It is about helping our kids avoid a lot of pain. I like kids, so I am all about helping them avoid pain.
I am busy working on my latest book, Did God Invent the Internet that is all about whether technology will ultimately be good or bad for humanity. The great thing about writing a book is it forces me to think about the world in a different way. I find myself using the word discretion more lately and slowed down long enough to evaluate why.
I could give you the Webster’s version of the meaning of the word discretion, but what fun is that. Here is mine: Discretion is making a positive choice between two or more options. The key points being making a positive choice, and between options. As in, she had the discretion not to wear the tube top to the job interview. As the title of the blog states, discretion is becoming a pretty critical tool in our ability to be good human beings. Oh, I know, it always has. We have always had to have the good discretion to know who to hang out with and who to stay away from. Or to back away from peer pressure when it would lead us astray. To wear sunblock on summer days, and to not where Speedo’s if your fat percentage is in the double digits.
Consider for a minute a couple of the dynamics Web 2.0 brought us, frictionless communication, and instant access to any piece of information, picture, or video from any device 24/7. With all of this opportunity, comes an increase in the need for responsibility, and ergo discretion. I guess that is why some people have to turn on the drunk text capability so they don’t reach out to people and say what they normally would not say sober. Which reminds me, I am very glad that I did not have texting or Skype when I was a randy 16-year-old boy, or a heavy drinking 20 year old. I got in enough trouble without being device augmented. I still remember being a kid, with a kid’s lack of discretion. So I am not surprised at what kids are now doing with mobile devices and social tools.
The difference now is the number of choices we have has exploded and we now have the option of instant action on those choices. Increase the volume of options and the corresponding consequences of the choices, and the importance of discretion increases dimensionally. For example, when I can search for a picture of any sex act known to man, I have to apply the discretion of knowing that just because I could find those graphics, they are not really good to burn into the sensitive emulsion of my mind. That requires a conscious intellectual choice to cancel out potential animalistic desires. When I am angry at someone, I have to apply a conscious choice to not lash out online, or instantly through texting, instead of what everything in my being screams to do. Ergo, having discretion in both cases. Easy to say as a 49 year-old, much harder to do as a teenager.
No this is not going to turn into a blog about the dangers of sexting because that activity is just a symptom of the problem, and the problem would be lack of discretion (or morals for that matter.) When we provide a device and social technologies to young people, and frankly, many older people, we give them access to billions of other people – instantly. We give them access to billions of pages of content on every subject – instantly, and every video uploaded to YouTube, and there are millions of them. With all these choices, and the consequences that come with them, we better learn the art of discretion, and figure out how to teach it to young people. Fail that, and we will reap a generation that will be scarred by a billion cuts of bad technology augmented decisions…
Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com