Democracy in knowledge
Communications Officer Innes Burns continues the Digital Conversation.
Have you seen the 11-year-old from Pilton who shares Tik Tok videos of her cooking and winding up her auld man? She is absolutely hilarious.
Don’t take it from me… ask Khloe Kardashian who also thought so, famously sharing her chicken wrap review video in June last year.
Carly and her Dad, Ryan, now have millions of views on their videos spouting classic Scottish humour whilst making dinner. @daddyandcarly’s “Pilton Tea” became an internet sensation after an idea so seemingly simple was suddenly recognised, rightfully, as a pure stroke of genius.
I bring this up as part of Children in Scotland’s Digital Conversation. I feel like we hear a lot about how damaging digital platforms are without balance.
We’re a far cry from watching jaw-dropping documentaries about how Facebook changed the world by liberating countries during the Arab spring through the power of connection. It seemed like we had this incredible thing with endless possibilities and so much in front of us.
You hear plenty of admiration for individual pieces of content, but when people talk about social media as a whole, the tone is rarely enthusiastic.
There are a lot of extraordinary, previously unimaginable, benefits for young people. It has, for instance, completely revolutionised the ability to consume knowledge.
Think how many barriers we’ve reduced when it comes to learning? If you were raised in a catchment area with less resourceful, worse-performing schools, or you couldn’t afford university or didn’t get the grades to get there… entire careers and opportunities remained permanently out of reach for certain children and young people. Expertise is historically gatekept behind institutions.
That world has changed.
Today, a teenager has a smartphone with access to lectures from experts about endless subjects right across the globe. They’ve got YouTube tutorials, social media explainers. Community groups. There’s podcasts, language-learning apps, channels making complex subjects more digestible… the capacity to learn is astronomical.
In other words, knowledge access is more democratic. I think that’s something needing to be strongly considered in conversations surrounding children and young people’s relationship with technology.
That’s all without mentioning the creative aspects of digital platforms that allow people to express themselves. Victorian-style school exams might not give young people the confidence and gratification that their worth deserves, but recognition of our more artistic traits can be online.
Look at Carly! We’re a nation known for its comedy and there is nowhere near enough in the school curriculum to harness that.
In comes Tik Tok, completely changing the course of her life.
It is almost sad to think that there are thousands of Carly’s in Scotland with similar wit, charm and humour, yet don’t have the confidence or digital literacy to do something similar. Instead we seem to be relentlessly projecting our fears, as adults, about technology onto them.
I’m not for a second trying to undermine very alarming and urgent conversations about the harm digital platforms are causing… I’m merely adding to the wider digital conversation.
It deserves scrutiny, but also credit where it’s due.
