Against the Algorithm
“Handing our children a smartphone baked with uncontrollable algorithms is like offering them a new dog to care for 24-7. It is not a question of responsibility. It is a question of readiness.” Erin Loechner - The Opt-Out Family.
Like the proverbial frog being boiled alive, each new product release and software update draws us further into the belief that progress, technology, and happiness are inextricably linked. From John Locke’s “free market” theories to Steve Job’s 1:1 mission to put an iBook in each student’s backpack, Western societies have jumped in with two feet to adopt the latest and greatest products believing they make us better, more efficient, more connected, and happier.
Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) spoke about three main focuses in life: the life of pleasure, the practical life, and the theoretic life. The life of pleasure leads to an ever expanding desire for more. The practical life seeks to get ahead for some end beyond itself while the theoretic life aims at finding the good, the true, and the beautiful and reproducing it as an end in itself. Aristotle also championed the idea of moderation as being the key to virtue. The deficiency or excess of a character trait can lead to a destructive vice. Finding the mean between two extremes can lead to flourishing. Though our entertainment and consumer driven lives may seem exciting, they often fall into the first two categories. Moderation and discernment is needed for parents to successfully guide their children to maturity.
The Algorithm that children and adults are exposed to today is not the algorithm of five or ten years ago. It is supercharged, adaptive, and has thousands if not tens of thousands of technicians seeking to improve it (make it more engaging) on a daily basis. The stories of child addiction to a phone, social media app, YouTube, or other sites is growing on a daily basis. It is common for children to be constantly interrupted and distracted by their phones and devices even when in the midst of friends. When the phones are put or taken away, suddenly they return to the present full of life and curiosity.
Erin Loechner suggests that rather than accepting conventional wisdom parents today can be disrupters. It may seem hard to parent without screens, but parenting with screens has become close to impossible. Limiting screen time is yesterday’s solution. The effects of the Algorithm are more destructive today than at any time in the past. Social conformity, passivity, and depression cascade in a short amount of time. Hard work, goal setting, real life skills, emotional intelligence, eye contact, and resiliency are being eroded at a frightening pace.
Conventional belief says that children need smart technology “to foster social connection with their peers.” Disruption looks like asking the question, “What if smartphones don’t help children foster social connections with their peers?” In fact, Loechner notes that many teens are “quietly stepping away from the rat race of constantly snapping, scrolling, texting, and tiktoking.”
Loechner quotes Sheryl Turkle, “sociable technology always disappoints because it promises what it cannot deliver. It promises friendship but can only deliver performance.” This is the illusion of smart devices - companionship. The real world becomes dull compared to the digitally curated, emotionally charged universe of the web or net. In the real world, webs and nets are devices that predators use to trap their prey.
Neil Postman in Technopoly reminds us that “every invention is both an amplification and an amputation.” Once you rely on a technology or invention to accomplish a task, you slowly lose the ability to do it yourself.
The Medievals had developed a fourfold sense in order to interpret events or uncover meaning within a text. It is a rich and deep way of seeing and seeking to understand the world. First, there was the Literal or Historical sense. What it is that has actually been said or has happened. Second, the Allegorical or Typological sense points to what something is like or prefigures. In Scripture, this would pertain to events in the Old Testament and their relation to the life of Jesus in the New Testament. Third, the Tropological or Moral concludes what someone should or should not do. Is there a moral lesson or ethical principal that can be dug up and held aloft? Finally, the Anagogical sense looked at the end of a matter. What is the final outcome to be?
Looking at smart technology both Allegorically and Anagogically, Paul Kingsnorth in, Against the Machine makes the case that we are becoming a “megamachine, a machine made of human parts…which grows and grows, pursuing ever more vainglorious goals - global economies, genetically modified organisms, interplanetary travel, the abolition of death - until they have swallowed cultures, devastated ecosystems and broken boundaries they didn’t even know existed… The Machine is not simply a vast, soulless mechanism for accruing material wealth. It is, in some deadly fashion, a sacred object in itself. It is its own enchantment.”
Most likely, many of us haven’t stepped outside of the reach of our smart devices for a few hours, let alone a day, week, or month recently. Can we even remember what life was like when we were children? Often, it is only when it becomes necessary that we move to make tough choices. We are at the point where our children are languishing due to unlimited access and connection to the Algorithm and Machine Life. Will we look the other way, or will we put ourselves between them and the Machine and be the filter that blocks the toxicity?